Original subtitles

They pledged to defend the law,

represent the will of the people.

But time and again, elected officials

have sold their soul and betrayed us all from mob money,

some countries a little more than mafia nations.

Once an organized crime group gets a grip on society,

it is very difficult to break.

Why?

Simple.

Crime bosses know that the secret to maintaining their power

is to corrupt their greatest adversary - the government.

Today, organized crime has been traced

to all regions of the globe.

One of the most distinguishing,

albeit regrettable characteristics of the 20th century

has been the proliferation of organized crime.

The transformation of the mafia into an organization

with the managerial hierarchy occurred when the fabric

of America was undergoing a major alteration.

East Harlem was a really tough immigrant neighborhood.

I mean, it was poor, it was violent,

it was squalid, it was crowded.

And really, the modern American mafia

as we know it was born up on those streets.

In the boyhood rumbles of guys like Luciano,

Lucchese and Frank Costello and Vito Genovese.

They all knew each other and they were all in the same,

what was called a borgata.

Borgata means like a gang.

A gang of delinquent boys.

And every block in an Italian neighborhood

had a social club.

And when they walked past the social club,

they saw something very different.

Guys with suits, beautiful suits.

Fedoras, okay?

Italian handmade shoes.

Big, beautiful cars, women.

Kids like Lucchese, they wanted to hang around,

'cause what did they see?

They saw the American dream - money, power.

Nobody bothered these guys.

Once Luciano's boyhood gang organized,

they soon graduated from rumbles and petty crime

to more sophisticated rackets.

Soon, the gangsters are rolling in cash.

As this new mafia's power grew,

they expanded into other rackets,

gambling, prostitution, and narcotics.

Law enforcement attempted to stop them,

but the gangsters had already put

their newfound wealth to good use,

buying off policemen, judges, and mayors.

Others were just too frightened

to stop the growth of the mob.

With the cooperation of local government,

Luciano's crime syndicate

established a stranglehold on the city.

Luciano's story is not unique.

The cocaine cartels of Columbia began in much the same way.

Columbia's biggest drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar,

forged a crime empire

by corrupting his government on a massive scale.

Escobar had a simple method

of influencing judges and politicians.

You would send an attorney to offer the official a choice,

plomo or plata, lead or silver.

If he did not take the bribe,

he and his family could expect to get a bullet instead.

Because of his power and because of his,

I would say just brute force,

he was able to influence a lot of people.

The people heard, especially judges and prosecutors

in Columbia would hear the name Pablo Escobar,

they would feel like there was a death threat

and they would not get in his way.

At one point,

there was no one in the entire country

Escobar could not buy, silence, or kill.

In fact, when he was finally convicted,

officials on Escobar's payroll

allowed him to bill his own prison

that was more like a hacienda.

It's a same old story in Japan.

Authorities are struggling to free themselves

from the grip of the Yakuza.

The Japanese syndicate

is so entwined itself into business and government.

The three are virtually indistinguishable.

They recruit the unemployed

to the political corridors of government.

They can be deeply religious, kind, and thoughtful,

but can be as ruthless as Japan's World War II image.

They currently operate beyond the laws and in secret.

With the decay of the communist system,

there is little left to separate

the Russian mafia from the government.

Corruption is so widespread in Russia

that officials simply buy their positions

and use their power to criminal operations.

The Russians are particularly different

than other mafia groups,

because they have a level of professionalism

that really comes from their long record

of being able to deal

with a very difficult totalitarian system.

They know how to get around it.

They know how to get around the police.

They know how to suborn and corrupt officialdom,

and most of them are quite shrewd

and intelligent businessmen.

Slums are often the home of neighborhood gangs

of one type or another.

But hoodlum gangs have become organized crime groups

with billion dollar assets.

This happened in Jamaica in the '80s,

when a street thug named Jim Brown

teamed up with a nation's president.

Brown came out of one of the toughest

neighborhoods in Kingston.

He grew up poor and hungry,

but his appetite for wealth led to a life of crime

that landed him in prison.

His story is a classic example of what can happen

when government officials become partners in crime.

Good day, Mr. Brown.

The British Privy Council have reviewed your appeal.

I'm afraid you lost.

The federal marshals are on their way

to extradite you to the United States.

Oh, they're gonna wish they never did that.

They all love the money I give.

The politicians, they're the criminals.

You want to eat in this country?

You got to play by their rules.

That's how I came to be locked up here,

playing by their rules all my life.

You see, I was one of the suffering youth.

The suffering youth?

Oh, that's the quaint phrase they give

to the poor misbegotten youth of...

Forgive me, Mr. Brown.

You don't know nothing, man.

No, I suppose in a sense, you are quite correct.

Uh, please continue.

You were saying you were part of the suffering youth.

We had nothing, not even enough to eat.

The police and the government

were getting fat off their own people.

When that hurricane money came down to help the people,

where you think it go to?

The people?

No, man, it goes in their pockets.

We have to have crime to live,

to take our peace back from them.

We gotta have the posse to protect ourselves

from the cops who are gonna kill us.

A typical childhood of a suffering youth in Jamaica

is a very frightening one

in the sense that many of that generation

was simply not able to have access to high schools.

I mean, their schooling would end at the age of 14 or 15.

It would mean then that just housing

would be a serious problem.

Getting food on a daily basis would be a serious problem.

Many of these people depended

on remittances coming from abroad.

I mean, that really sometimes determined

whether they survived or did not survive.

And of course, growing up in those communities

with a level of violence, you really had to be tough

in order to survive, and just very difficult to survive

if you didn't develop a certain inner toughness.

The government gave you a good job

building houses, didn't it, Mr. Brown?

You mean that welding shop on Milk Lane?

The only time I made money was during the elections.

The elections?

Look, man, it's not just elections here.

The way things work in Jamaica

is that neighborhoods get favors.

Like housing developments from politicians.

To get favors, they got to vote for that guy

when he's running for president.

I see.

But what does that have to do with your welding business?

Well, now, where you come from?

You don't think.

Now, if you know where the neighborhoods are,

they're gonna to vote for your enemy, what you gonna do?

You burn them out.

The posses came up at the same time

as Jamaica's politics were polarized in the 1970s.

By the time Michael Manley became Prime Minister in 1972,

and Edward Seaga, the leader of the Jamaica Labor Party,

had emerged as his nemesis on the right,

the two men were really engaged in a vicious power struggle

for dominance in Jamaica.

Seaga's tactics were always known

to be extraordinarily dirty.

He was perfectly willing to use violence,

and most Jamaicans will tell you

that it was the JLP that really opted the ante

of violence in Jamaica's politics in the 1970s.

Michael Manley retaliated by developing his own garrisons.

And the level of this warfare is almost impossible

for an American to understand because it involves strategies

and tactics such as burning people out of their homes.

If there's an area that's known to be packed

with supporters of one party

and you are then the other party and you wanna unseat them,

you simply torch that neighborhood by night

and shoot at the firemen

as they're trying to put out blaze.

And when the blaze is over, you bulldoze the rubble

and build a housing scheme, as it's called in Jamaica,

a housing project,

and you pack it full of your own supporters.

It was a no-holds barred, undeclared civil war.

It was extraordinary in its viciousness,

and Jamaicans very soon began to call it tribal war.

Violence had become so much a way of life

in Jamaica's politics that neither political party

seemed willing to try to extricate it.

While Jim Brown profited

from this political turf war,

he soon realized that the real power

was not in the contracting business,

but within Jamaica's corrupt political structure.

So you became involved in organized crime

through the president of Jamaica?

Biggest crook on island.

When I seen how President Seaga had all this power,

I decided I need to get closer to the top.

So I pick up a gun,

and I start to work for Seaga as an enforcer.

I was good with a gun.

People on the street, they know my name.

They afraid of me.

Soon, I become Seaga's bodyguard and right hand man.

Now, when the election comes and Seaga wins,

that's good for me.

I could get some of that power too.

And for the other side, we got rid of them quick.

After President Seaga won the 1980 election,

the gunman that helped him to gain power

became a force in their own right.

Brown, as Seaga's right hand man,

is becoming don of Jamaica's underworld,

as rivals were running scared.

And these gangsters began to go out of Jamaica

after the 1980 election when they were essentially

on the run for their lives.

They saw that Seaga had won.

Anybody who had fired shots for the PNP, the rival party,

knew that they really had to get out of Jamaica.

With a competition gone,

Jim Brown's power grew.

He had established himself

as a godfather of Jamaica's drug mafia,

but the war on drugs was beginning in the United States

and law enforcement was cracking down

on Jamaica's greatest export - marijuana.

They can't get the shipments through.

So now we got a big load of guns

just sitting on the docks at Kingston.

Does it surprise you

that the Americans don't want you

shipping drugs to their country?

- You don't understand- - Hey, hey, hey!

If the ganja don't go out,

then a lot of Jamaican's gonna be hungry.

But I know a lot of people now

in places in Jamaica and Miami, in places in the States.

So that's when I start shipping the ganja out,

and then the money starts to come in.

So you got rich?

Everybody got some of the money.

Posses aren't just gangs.

We're like the guys we used to see

in those movies back in Kingston.

We made our own justice.

There is a gun culture in Jamaican society,

that there is a fascination for guns.

And of course, my things about guns

is that when you put guns in the hands of poor people

or suffering youths, it is a form of empowerment,

and it gives them a sense that they can,

they have control over life and death.

What was happening on the streets downtown in Kingston

was a growing fascination with the Hollywood silver screen,

and primarily, the outlaws and cowboys and bandits

that came out of Hollywood

in the '50s and '60s and early '70s.

The gangsters who were by then up and coming

in the ranks of both parties began to style themselves

after these cowboy heroes.

And that became the real kind of emotional substance

that the gangs carried to Kingston's poor.

That was just something that Jamaicans adored,

because their own lives were nasty and short.

And when they looked at Hollywood movies,

they felt as if those movies

were really telling the story of their lives.

Brown quickly formed his Jamaican connections

into an organized crime group called the Shower Posse,

named for their ability

to shower their enemies with bullets.

The group brought havoc to the United States

when Brown decided to expand his drug dealing operations.

So once you're in control in Jamaica,

what made you decide to return to the United States?

Or was it the money again?

I sure was making money.

We were selling in Washington, New York, Miami.

We were making money hand over fist,

but there were a lot of other gunmen

from Jamaica trying to sell drugs.

We had to get rid of them.

Get rid of them?

There was this reggae club where those guys went.

We followed them.

You just, forgive the pun, showered them with bullets,

even the innocent bystanders?

Anybody who goes against me, they're gonna die.

People have asked, if these men are so violent,

and if they kill so many of their own in the line of duty,

so to speak, why is it that Jamaicans see them as heroic,

as Robinhood, defenders of the poor?

And the reason for this,

and it's really the most important and a salient fact,

the drug trade became the only game in town.

These men, men like Jim Brown and his Shower Posse,

became the people, the only people

who were putting shoes on the feet of children,

who were putting roofs over people's heads

so that when somebody needs money

to pay a child's school entrance fee,

they're gonna turn to their local posse.

That's who they're gonna go to for help,

because they can't go to the government anymore.

Like these fools in some crack house in Miami.

When we rolled up in front of the place,

I just felt this anger.

I burst in and shot the guy.

But there was this woman there.

She was pregnant.

That was very brave of you.

I did what I had to do.

A man tried...

A man tried to mash my corn,

he better know I'm gonna mash his corn back

and his whole field too.

And did President Seaga know about all of this?

The corn mashing, as you put it?

Who you think I learned it from?

The Shower Posse was gaining wealth and power

through the drug trade, but the very tools they used

to enforce their grip on their turf

would prove to be their undoing.

We needed the guns to keep control.

But when they were used too much in the states,

then we shipped them down to Jamaica

so we could use them again.

We packed them away good to hide 'em from customs.

I don't know how they found all those guns.

At that point,

he was also sending firearms back to Jamaica.

In 1984, the Shower tried to send, did send down to Jamaica

an enormous shipment of firearms

that wound up on the Kingston wards,

and someone was tipped off.

And so the person who was to claim it never did.

When they opened the barrel

and found these high-powered weapons,

this was the first time that Interpol,

the International Police Organization was called in

to try to track the source of these guns.

And it was discovered that some of these same guns

that had been sent in this barrel back to Jamaica

had been used in homicides in the United States.

And it was really that shipment of guns to Jamaica in 1984

that first alerted international law enforcement

to the presence of the posses.

Once law enforcement identified the Shower Posse,

they began to target them for prosecution

as an organized crime group.

The RICO statute is a statute aimed

at corrupt organizations.

Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations,

and it's designed to target an organization,

a legitimate or illegitimate that is corrupt in some way.

A coordinated effort led by the New York office

of the FBI in conjunction

with the New York City Police Department

targeted numerous locations known to be used by the posse,

used as either residences or warehouses for cash

and guns and drugs.

Numerous posse members were arrested that night,

taken into federal custody.

Automatic weapons were seized.

Large amounts of marijuana, cocaine,

and heroin were also seized.

Law enforcement was successful

in breaking up the Shower Posse.

Now, they set their sights on his leader, Jim Brown.

So American law enforcement was beginning to feel

that it could go up against these gangs and win.

There had been so many homicides by that time

attributed to Jim Brown and the Shower

that the alcohol, tobacco and firearms, the DEA, the FBI,

the New York Police Department

and the Metro Dade Police Department felt

that if they could get Jim Brown back to the United States,

they could prosecute him and win.

So once they found these guns

and linked you to another murder, they didn't charge you

but deported you to Jamaica to stand trial.

I was President Seaga's right hand man.

I'm an untouchable.

So you were just let off for these murders?

I keep Jamaica running.

Of course they're gonna let me go.

But now, United States try to extradite me

for those things I've done with Shower Posse.

They put pressure on President Seaga.

If he didn't extradite you, Jamaica would've suffered.

I'm afraid the courts won't be so easy on you.

The Americans take a very dim view of this sort of thing.

I put Seaga where he is today.

He wouldn't be president of Jamaica without me.

I did most of those crimes for him.

He wants to lock me away when he is just as guilty as me.

I get a sense you feel betrayed.

Oh, you got that right, man.

If it's any consolation, you're not alone.

President Seaga betrayed his oath of office,

his country, his people, and of course, the suffering youth.

Hey, time's up, gotta go.

Unfortunately, he had assistance, didn't he, Mr. Brown?

Well, he better think twice about sending me

because he will have a lot of questions about him,

and I got a lot of answers.

Before the United States marshals arrived

to pick up Brown, he was mysteriously killed in jail,

burned alive in his cell.

Jim Brown was going to be extradited

to stand trial in the United States.

Edward Seaga knew that if he were allowed

to go back to the United States and talk,

he would tell the federal authorities

everything he knew about his connections to Seaga

and the Jamaica Labor Party

and the ways in which the party had aided and abetted

the Shower Posses exploits in the United States.

Jim Brown was burned to death in a fire

in his cell at Kingston's General Penitentiary

in February of 1992,

as U.S. federal marshals were waiting to take him back

aboard a plane to Miami.

- He died- - When an enterprising

young reporter at the funeral asked Mr. Seaga

if Jim Brown had enjoyed the backing of a politician,

Seaga all but lost his temper with this man

and said that Jim Brown had been a defender of his community

and hero to the poor, and that sooner or later,

Jim would realize that such men were really heroic.

I think what you can say about Jim Brown

was that if you were a supporter, you adored him.

And if you were an adversary, you were terrified of him.

In China, organized crime is as old as the country itself.

As with various other old world nations,

Chinese organized crime was always part of the culture.

The exodus of the Chinese in the 1800s

exported Asian organized crime to the rest of the world.

Soon, Chinese syndicates were everywhere.

They called themselves The Triads.

Triads began when a Chinese emperor

ordered the extermination of monks

who were supreme martial arts masters.

After their temple was burned and their members massacred,

the surviving monks went underground.

In fact, the term "triad" is derived from the triangle

the monks used to represent heaven, earth, and man.

With the fall of the last emperor,

this secret organization prospered

and established close connections to political figures

who recruited the triad members

as bodyguards and secret police.

While triads performed a useful function,

the arrival of the Communist Party

in China spelled their doom.

Party leader Mao Zedong's cultural revolution

aimed to cleanse China of its old regime,

including the triads.

When Chiang Kai-shek fled with his army to Taiwan,

the triads had found a perfect sanctuary.

After 1949, the triads only had one place to go,

or two places, really, to Hong Kong and then to Taiwan.

And so they reestablished their ties with Taiwan.

Chiang Kai-shek was able to utilize them as secret police.

He was able to use them as hitmen

when he began his rampage against the communists.

Like every other political organization anywhere,

you need some muscle.

And he turned to them

because they're the most logical people to turn to.

Generally, they played in very, very well with politics.

Now, there is a connection between politics and the triad,

but the triad has its place and it has been used

repeatedly by the politicians in China

over the past 50 years.

In fact, they still are.

It was in Taiwan that the triads

began to take on a more sinister form.

The first thing you have to understand

is that the triads aren't really gangs.

They operate under a strict code of conduct and loyalty.

They're all blood brothers.

There's actually a ceremony

where they mix each other's blood in tea and drink it.

An investigative reporter

who wishes to remain anonymous for his own safety

became familiar with Taiwan's underworld

while working on a story about the country's largest triad,

United Bamboo.

That's when I decided

to go after the head of United Bamboo.

They called him White Wolf,

and half of me wants to see this guy busted.

But I'm not a cop.

I want his story.

His real name was Chang An-lo.

And in his mid-50s, he was the honorary godfather

of the 24 tongs or gangs.

With the billions he made in the various triad rackets,

he could afford to keep himself in style.

The reporter began with his triad contacts

in Taiwan's underworld.

Through a careful series of meetings

with the lieutenants of the United Bamboo triad,

he gained their trust.

The triads are organized

under the head man or dragon head.

You have different members responsible for such things

as swearing in new soldiers, leading men into gang warfare,

acting as liaisons between different triad groups.

Under them, other soldiers and new recruits,

they're not just a gang.

Everyone has this place,

and if you step out of line, you pay the price.

The reporter was finally cleared

to meet the white wolf, but with one condition.

He was to come alone,

and the white wolf's face would not be shown.

But he wasn't some flashy thug.

He had five undergraduate degrees to his name.

He was also bilingual in English and Chinese.

Tracking the leader of the triads

through the maze of the Chinese underworld

seemed nearly impossible.

Eventually, the reporter's persistence paid off.

Or perhaps, it was simply that the white wolf

had nothing to fear.

Yes, Mr. Chang.

Lately, we all heard about the government crackdown

on an organized crime group such as United Bamboo.

Huh, organized crime?

You're mistaken.

I am president of an investment company,

the strategy group, similar to thousands of triad brothers

who own legitimate concerns.

They're simply arresting anyone who's a triad.

With all due respect, Mr. Chang,

what about the construction bids?

The strategy group rids through intimidation

and government corruption?

Politicians who have interest in construction,

big bids too.

The triads had a contracted bid

on a freeway construction job.

He was up against a legitimate businessman.

Of course, the legitimate man's bid was lower.

Triads have to inflate the budget of their project

in order to skim money.

They intimidate the bidders,

threatened to kill their families.

The bidders back off.

Then the government officials more than happy

to hand over the contract to his triad friends,

and he looks clean.

But the problem with the freeway construction job

was that they skimmed so much money

there's no money left for building.

Halfway through the project,

a big section of the freeway just collapsed.

That got the public's attention.

I remember thinking, is this what I want for Taiwan?

A core of corruption so rotten

that the whole country collapses?

Politicians who have interest

in construction rig bids too.

They accept a high bid on a job

and skim the profits in their own pockets.

Why single out the triad businessman?

Would you rather we run opium dens and number rackets?

Basically, they'll do anything.

They can make money at prostitution, drug trafficking,

gun smuggling, you name it, they're involved.

But the most disturbing part of all this

is that they have intertwined themselves

with legitimate businesses and the government.

They own big companies, they support the politicians

for money and votes that are bought by the triads.

And they're all in bed together.

You rail against the politicians.

But what are they left to do when the system's so corrupt?

My point, exactly.

What am I to do?

You can't separate triads from the government,

any more than you could peel ying from yang.

How do you think President Lee got elected?

Now, he's the one leading the crackdown.

The people were in an uproar.

President Lee had no choice

but to turn the heat up on the triads.

There were many arrests,

but the head of United Bamboo avoided capture.

Whether it's the American mob or the Chinese triads,

a gangs have sent to the ranks of large criminal enterprises

comes when they learn that their biggest enemy

can also be their greatest ally, their own government.

This has happened in Mexico,

with tragic results for law enforcement.

Mexico shares a 2000-mile border with the United States

and the drug traffickers no authorities can't patrol at all.

Producing and shipping drugs has become big business.

For the DEA, their only hope of stopping it

is to go in undercover

and bust drug trafficking operations at the source.

A tragic case of DEA agent Enrique Camarena

is a telling indictment of the union of government

and mafia drug lords.

I guess you could say I was a casualty

of the war on drugs.

I was a DEA agent,

working undercover in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Pretty gung-ho about it too.

But I guess looking back on it,

the only good thing was the food.

Tracking these guys down wasn't hard.

Mexico was full of hardworking families

trying to make an honest living.

These guys stuck out like sore thongs.

Ernesto Carrillo.

He was the one who built up the drug cartel.

He acted as a mentor to an up and coming drug lord

named Rafael Caro Quintero.

We knew Carrillo and Quintero

were both trafficking tons of drugs into the States.

But looking back on it, we really didn't have a clue

how big this thing was.

Once I knew who the key players were,

the next step was to locate their base of operations.

Flying over the countryside, Camarena searched

for drug plantations and processing facilities.

He spotted a vast crop at a farm called El Buffalo,

a marijuana plantation in Chihuahua,

owned and operated by Rafael Caro Quintero.

The DEA briefed the Mexican army.

Together, they organized a successful raid

on Quintero's operation.

But after the raid, something strange happened.

All the expensive equipment at El Buffalo vanished,

even though it was under armed guard.

And there was another thing.

This was a gigantic operation.

How did the Mexican police not know about this place before?

I was beginning to wonder who was protecting Quintero.

Just how I am, his connections went.

Business, you know?

That's what we're doing here.

Playing business. - Caro Quintero

was just a cowboy.

He was rough and crude and brutal.

The director of the Mexican

federal police force was Juan Zorrilla.

Camarena began to suspect

that the government official

was protecting Mexican drug smuggler.

Despite the danger, Camarena continued

with his investigation of the drug lord

and his political connections.

Has being taken care of as we speak.

I began wondering about Zorrilla.

I met him one time at one of those photo ops

staged by the Mexican government.

Zorrilla and the DEA were teaming up

to fight the war on drugs.

What a joke.

There's a saying in Mexico,

the "mordido," which means the bite.

Nothing occurs in Mexico unless somebody gets paid.

Corruption is a culture in Mexico.

It's endemic to the process of government.

The mafia exists 'cause of politicians,

and the government allow them

to exist for their own enrichment.

Quintero would hold parties

out of El Huarachon de Chihuahua,

and he had a caged lion, a couple of them,

and everybody would be partying.

And part of the entertainment was he'd throw snitches

in the cage and they'd watch him be devoured.

It was then that Camarena made a major mistake.

He trusted a Mexican cop.

They were all there, the drug lords and Zorilla,

Mexico's top cop, like a fat and sassy vulture.

Enrique Camarena.

You should not have put your nose in our business.

Is this the pig who busted my operations in Chihuahua?

- Enrique Camarena. - Listen to me.

I work for the DEA.

You've just kidnapped a federal agent

of the United States government.

Don't worry about us, amigo.

Worry about what we're going to do to you.

You are a cop.

You've got a badge.

Badge?

I got no stinking badge.

How the hell can you do this?

You betrayed us all and your own people for what?

Money.

Once he had captured Camarena,

they were determined to find out all he knew.

Amigo, what do you know?

What do you know?

I was in bad shape.

They didn't want me dying

before I could tell them everything.

So they gave me some kind of a drug

to make my heart hold out longer.

They wanted to know everything,

the names, the details, how high up the investigation went.

But I didn't talk.

If I did, other agents would be in my place.

But actually, I wasn't thinking about anyone else.

I'm no hero.

I was thinking about me.

You see, when there's no hope and nothing left,

the only thing you got is what you have inside.

And I sure as hell wasn't going to give that to them,

even if it killed me.

The cowardly murder of Enrique "Kiki" Camarena,

special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration,

was carried out by the Mexican government in conjunction,

in cooperation, in partnership

with the godfathers of the drug trade.

The bodies of Camarena and his pilot

were found dumped on the roadside.

Both had been tortured to death.

U.S. law enforcement agents were outraged.

Enrique Camarena died a soldier in the drug war,

but his life is not revenged

with the prosecution of those people that murdered him

or those people that sanctioned that murder

were officials of the Mexican government.

Camarena's murder put the heat on Mexico

to clean up the rampant level of corruption.

But once such a criminally-controlled

government is established,

it's nearly impossible to eradicate.

Law enforcement in the United States

were equally frustrated in their efforts

to put mob gangsters behind bars.

Law enforcement changed tactics

and began targeting the organizations.

One of the things we were looking to do

was to use the RICO statute to indict the commission,

the heads of the five New York crime families.

The organized crime task force had extraordinary information

as to the Lucchese family

and some evidence as to the heads of one or two others.

The FBI had bugs in

on the heads of three families at the time.

And so if you combine the two,

there was a mountain of evidence that could be used

to indict and convict all of the family bosses.

After Jim Brown's death,

the government successfully used these statues

to bring the Jamaican posse's reign of terror to an end.

The Shower Posse today, if it exists at all,

exists as a network of people

who used to be much more closely aligned in business,

in their business being narcotics, trafficking,

and weapons trafficking.

As it exists today, they probably are members of,

if not leaders of smaller groups around the country

who simply have a past affiliation with the Shower Posse.

The people of Taiwan had enough

for their government's involvement with the triads.

In April 2000, President Lee was ousted.

The spirit of reform swept the country.

Anti-corruption laws were enacted,

and many triads were rounded up.

In response to pressure from the United States,

a warrant was issued for the arrest of Quintero,

but the narcotics smuggler bribed his way out of Mexico

with a check for a quarter of a million dollars.

Quintero's immigration papers

were signed by the director of police, Jose Zorilla.

After the public outcry about Mexico's political corruption,

Zorilla quietly resigned his post

and was allowed to leave the country.

Despite the efforts of a few brave officials,

Mexico remains troubled by corruption.

Enrique Camarena was a hero in the fight against drugs,

but his death meant very little,

for Mexican drug kings still rule,

and narcotics still flow across the border.

As we have seen, in our own country and elsewhere,

organized crime can be beaten

with the vigilance of law enforcement

and courageous politicians

who do not bow to money and intimidation.

The nations of the world can be free

from the menace of organized crime.

I'm Robert Stack.

Thanks for joining us.