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[charango playing]

Welcome to Bolivia...

...one of the most awe-inspiring countries on the planet.

From ragged snow-capped peaks...

...to pristine salt flats.

From sweltering Amazon jungles...

...to bustling city streets.

It's a landlocked nation full of colour...

...vibrant cultures...

...and stark contrast.

I first came to Bolivia in 1999.

I'd just completed my law degree,

and backpacking around South America

seemed like the perfect reward

before returning home to wear a suit and tie.

Instantly, I was enthralled by the country,

its people and its culture.

I had no idea that this trip

would lead me to writing my first book,

and change the course of my life for good.

Despite its sublime beauty,

Bolivia has a darker side.

In the Yungas region,

close to the world's highest major city, La Paz...

...you will find the source of Bolivia's most famous export.

Coca.

The coca leaf,

hailed locally for its medicinal qualities,

has been cultivated in these rich, fertile soils

for four centuries.

But coca is better known in the West

for being the base ingredient of cocaine.

They say the highest grade leaves

make the highest grade cocaine.

And Bolivian coca is the finest on the planet.

Back when I was travelling through Bolivia,

I heard a strange rumour along the Gringo Trail...

...that you could buy the very best cocaine -

the best of the best -

in La Paz's San Pedro prison.

I was told, "Just ask for Thomas."

Thomas McFadden was born in Tanzania

but grew up in the UK.

Raised in a broken home, he had very few prospects.

So he made a career all of his own...

...as an international drug smuggler.

I think I was addicted to trafficking.

but later I was excited.

For me, trafficking is like a game.

And then you have to outsmart them.

It's like a funny game.

Hey, man!

Hey!

-Hey, man. -Hey, mi hermano.

How are you, brother? Good man.

-Como estas? -Excelente!

-Yeah? -And you?

Thomas smuggled drugs all over the world,

including from Bolivia.

He planned each run meticulously

to make sure he'd never get caught...

...which worked just fine,

until a customs official he had bribed double-crossed him

and miraculously discovered five kilos of cocaine

hidden in the spines of his suitcases.

He was incarcerated in San Pedro prison,

the most bizarre penitentiary system in the world.

-No, that is Palmar. -That's Palmar.

-That's Cancha. -Cancha.

-San Martin. -San Martin.

-Guanay. -Guanay.

And behind us is Alamos.

Alamos, Pinos.

Pinos.

And over there - over there is La Posta.

La Posta.

La Posta, where all the rich politicians hang out, yeah?

San Pedro is a bustling micro-community...

...hidden behind 15-metre walls.

Amazingly, there are no guards inside.

The prisoners don't wear uniforms.

And they live with their wives, children and pets.

And they make their own rules.

Inmates have to buy their own cells...

...which they afford by taking jobs

and starting small businesses.

So, how are you feeling now, being on top

of almost the highest point in San Pedro prison?

I never thought about being here again.

Yeah, this is incredible.

The first day when I arrived, I got there at night.

So I went to one building.

I fell asleep, because I was really tired.

When I woke up in the morning,

I found myself like I was in the village.

I said, "Fuck! Hey!"

I could see the women,

markets, children going around.

I thought maybe I was in a dream where I was taken to prison.

For me, it was a crazy system, you know.

I had to pay for the cabbie from the courthouse to prison.

And then you have to buy your own house, you know.

There were, like, five sections,

so you had to choose the section you were going to live in.

They used to have five-star, four-star,

three-star, up to one-star.

So that is dependent on how much money you've got.

It doesn't depend on your crime.

Thomas, what was different when you were here?

Yeah, you know, I used to have my bed here.

-Bed here? -Yeah.

Wardrobe.

I used to put a TV on the top of the wardrobe.

I used to have a...

...dining table with six chairs.

Oh, this was your dining... your living room?

Yeah, my living room, you know.

Later, I had to do some improvements,

so I made a kitchen just to make myself comfortable,

because I knew I was going to be here for a long time.

Because my sentence, it was...

it was about between 18 to 30 years.

If they give you trafficking,

it means you are going to be facing 18 to 30 years.

Eighteen to 30 years for trafficking five kilograms?

Trafficking, yeah.

And you're stuck in this prison?

Yeah.

-Let's go, man. -Yeah.

Initially, Thomas made a modest living working in a shop,

until he hit on the idea

of running guided tours through the prison for backpackers,

which is when we first met.

Remember that first time when I came on that tour with you?

Yeah, I remember.

First went in there, I was scared, right?

I was really... I was not scared-scared,

but I was like, "This is crazy."

And then you were there, and you were like, "Hey, Rusty!"

Shook hands.

"That's a lovely name. Nice to meet you."

Yeah, I think...

there were some connections between us, you know.

The time when we were there, you know, I met a lot of people.

Word of the tours spread quickly,

earning Thomas an honourable mention

in the Lonely Planet guidebook.

I used to have, like, 50 to 70 visitors a day,

Some of them, they were spending a night.

Some of them, they spent a week, month together.

You can have lines, cokes, drinks.

Just to have some experience, you know.

Some of them, they never tried coke.

They had never seen the coke factory before.

But inside the prison,

they used to have a chance to see how to make coke.

Brothers.

"Brothers."

If I tell the story of San Pedro,

you might think it's a piece of cake,

but it's not, you know.

A lot of stabbings happen over there,

so it's dangerous as well, you know.

Although the kids and the women, they are living over there.

I know many people.

Some of them, they were a friend of mine,

and they got stabbed to death over there.

But I can say that I was lucky

to be sent over there to San Pedro,

because I had a huge experience as well.

I met nice people and I found my brother, Rusty.

I had time also to think about my life, you know.

I came out as a better person.

I was trying to pressure them to make them think

that I was an international human rights lawyer

so that they would find you innocent.

You were guilty of the first charges,

but innocent of the second?

-Yeah, I was innocent. -Innocent.

Thomas's story was so incredible,

I knew I had to write it.

So we came to an agreement.

Thomas would let me stay in his cell for four months,

interviewing him about his crazy experiences.

And in return,

I promised to do everything in my power

to get him out of there.

So with help from Thomas's backpacker friends,

I raised enough money to bribe three judges

and secure Thomas's freedom.

So I went into the judges' chambers,

and I sat down in front of the judges.

I'm like, "Here's your money.

Here it is, 4,000 dollars."

-Yeah. -"See you later."

-Yeah. -And I just walked out.

Breaking the terms of his parole,

we fled across the border and headed north to Colombia.

It was here that I finished

writing our book,Marching Powder.

Eventually, Thomas moved back to Tanzania.

But I stayed on in South America for the next seven years,

and unexpectedly found myself working for the US government

in a counter-terrorism programme set up to tackle kidnapping

and organised crime.

During that time, I immersed myself in the cocaine trade,

meeting members of terrorist organizations,

as well as the US and Colombian elite soldiers

fighting against them.

I witnessed first-hand the devastating impact

that trafficking has had on Central and South America.

And as I set off on a journey

deep into the region's dark underbelly,

I uncovered stories from key players

who prospered during the so-called golden age

of drug trafficking.

People from both sides of the law,

who were there from the very beginning of the drugs war,

and who might also hold the key as to how it will all end.

Theirs were stories of corruption, daring,

revenge and death.

Legends of the Wildlands.

So, how do we begin? Well, how else?

By tracking down the man

who got America hooked on cocaine in the first place.

George Jung is arguably the world's

most famous drug smuggler,

immortalised by Johnny Depp's portrayal of him

in the major Hollywood movieBlow.

Which was quite fitting, really,

as George certainly lived a blockbuster lifestyle,

all the while, helping to create

the most famous drug cartel in history.

You know, like, total freewill

is to wander naked into a dark forest

with no thought of return.

I lived that my whole life.

I failed a lot.

And I succeeded...

...only because...

I kept... refused to fail.

-Hi, darling. -How are you?

-You're magnificent. -Thank you.

Yes, aren't you a beautiful creature?

You make me believe in God.

-I wasn't very studious. -OK.

All right? I played football.

I played sports

and I majored in cheerleaders.

You know, I was obsessed with...

with girls, and then became obsessed with women.

My ultimate goal was to graduate from college,

and I majored in marketing,

and I was going to go into the advertising

and promotional industry.

How did you start getting into marijuana?

Well, my friend Tuna had been kicked out of school

for taking his clothes off.

And I said, "Let's get the hell out of here."

He said, "Where do you want to go?" I said, "California."

It was like a sandbox...

...surrounded by the most beautiful women in the world.

I'd never even seen a bikini before, for Christ's sake.

They don't wear bikinis in Boston.

Right?

We just looked at each other.

We knew we had found paradise.

But the problem was:

how are we going to survive in this paradise?

What happened is that my friend from Boston

stopped at my house in Manhattan Beach.

We had a punchbowl full of pot.

Everybody did.

You just rolled your own joint and life went on.

And... he said,

"Holy shit. Where did you get this?"

And I said,

"You buy it right here on the beach

for, like, 60 dollars a kilo."

And he said, "Do you know how much this costs

back at University of Massachusetts?"

And I said, "What, Frank?"

And he said, "300 dollars."

And I said...

..."You know what? Let's go into business."

There wasn't even a Drug Enforcement Agency until 1974.

A lot of people don't even know that.

And nobody knew what the hell was going on.

It was simple.

We would just take all this marijuana...

...to my ex-high school buddies

and give them a whole motorhome full of pot,

and they would just keep bringing the money

and the money and the money.

And... I became bored.

We're like fucking merchants, for Christ's sake.

Let's be pirates.

Let's go down to Mexico and get our own fucking pot.

Let's get airplanes and let's move our own pot.

Let's get it at fucking five dollars a kilo

and bring it all the way to the United States

and fucking sell it and have a good time.

[waves lapping onto shore]

You know what I mean?

There are very few people

that get involved in the drug business

to make a profit and get the hell out.

But it's no longer about the business.

It's the ego,

the arrogance, the women -

the whole goddamn thing.

And eventually, some son of a bitch -

whether you screw his wife

or he gets caught for some other stupidity -

is going to tell on you.

You're saying, if you go into the drug business,

you're doomed from the start?

Right.

I got arrested for the marijuana,

and then I was sentenced to Danbury Federal Prison...

...for five years.

And so...

...the gods of chaos

placed me in a cell with a Colombian.

Carlos Enrique Lehder.

And he said...

..."Do you know anything about cocaine?"

And I said, "No, tell me."

And he said,

"The first thing I'm going to tell you

is that it costs 60,000 a kilo in the United States of America,

and we can get it for, like, 10,000."

And, like, I said...

My eyes started spinning like...

you know, and they grew wider and wider.

Hundreds and millions and billions of fucking dollars.

My mind is just going crazy.

Carlos and I became, of course, very, very close.

I said, "I can get it across the border."

He said, "How will you do it?"

I said, "I'll use the same concept I did

getting marijuana out of Mexico."

He's also, at this stage, a member of the Medellín Cartel?

It wasn't really a cartel then.

-OK. -I mean...

So these guys are a bunch of...

sort of local criminals in Medellín, Colombia,

but they're not really exporting cocaine yet.

But they have seen the market potential,

and you come along, and you go,

"I know how to get it into the States

and I know how to distribute it."

They didn't know how... how to get it across the border.

And I told them.

I said, "I'll move fucking tonnes of this shit."

"I'll get it across."

And I said, "I have connections to unload it, too."

And I brought it out to the guy,

the barber, Richard.

And I said, "Don't ever cut this shit.

Just send it the way it is."

And I said, "You know everybody in fucking Hollywood."

I said, "Take it to those people and fucking sell it to them

for 60,000 dollars a fucking kilo."

So your first clients of your hairdresser friend

were basically people with money, right?

-Right. -Famous celebrities.

Poor people couldn't buy cocaine then.

Only rich people bought cocaine.

He came back, like, six or seven hours,

and he said, "Holy shit.

Go get more."

-It just went straightaway? -I don't...

It was serendipity.

It was something...

...that just was waiting to happen,

and somebody to make it happen.

And I just happened to be there.

You just happened to be the guy

who introduced the Medellín Cartel

to the United States of America,

which started an absolute...

-Insanity. -...epidemic.

Miami is one of the principal branch offices

for what can be called Cocaine Inc -

a huge international business

run by a relatively small band of smugglers

operating out of Colombia.

I tried to teach them about...

...quality and quantity.

And I said, "Bring it in in small amounts

and keep it at a super-high price."

So your business model was to keep it small

and keep the demand high -

supply low, price high.

-Right. -That's your model.

And what did they want to do?

It turned into a monster,

a monster, like everything else.

You know?

They just wanted to flood the market? What did they want?

Everybody and their brother caught onto the game.

Once they knew what the game was,

we couldn't stop it,

and it just became a complete fucking monster.

I would bring 250 kilos and a motorhome,

OK, at 10,000 a kilo.

"Here's the keys to it. Take it.

And when you bring back their money,

I'll give you the keys to the second motorhome

and the other 250 kilos."

So how much money were you making in these days?

Shitloads - 150,000-200,000 a month.

-A month? -Yeah.

How do you spend your money when you're making that much?

You think you're a real slick son of a bitch, all right?

You're the ultimate playboy of the universe.

That's what you do.

Obviously there's a point where you've got so much money that,

you know, you're not doing this any more because of money.

Why--

Because something happens to you.

Something happens, and you find out...

...a truth about yourself...

...that you were never really doing it for the money.

The money was just a tool.

You loved the game.

The game was your opiate.

You were addicted to fear.

And without that fear and challenging it...

...you had no self-satisfaction at all in your life.

You know what? I was...

...the guy...

...the athlete who lost the step...

...and was old.

And you can throw 1,000 touchdown passes

and get all the accolades in the world, or whatever.

When you lose that step...

...they boo you.

But you don't care that they boo you.

You just want to play the game

because... you love the game.

And I knew that I had lost the step and I was out.

I didn't belong in that game any more.

And I just wanted to play it...

...one more... once.

My best friend...

...once upon a time, Cliff...

...we did everything.

We did dozens of... hundreds of fucking trips.

We did everything. We were like brothers.

And he walks in a hotel room with...

...fucking two DEA agents...

...undercover.

I mean, I'm going to tell you something,

and this is the God's honest truth.

Seventy-five percent into this whole thing...

...I got really bad fucking vibes.

And I looked in Cliff's eyes and I said...

..."You would never fucking set me up, would you, Cliff?"

And he said, "No. Why?"

And you know what?

I knew he was going to do it,

but yet I... I played it out.

I... just wanted to be free of it all.

And I found a freedom in it.

I found a freedom.

I wrote the goddamn book...

...and I found myself.

After a long time,

after thousands of years of looking for myself,

I found myself.

And I'm at peace.

I'm at peace.

I was looking for me a long time.

George was a philosophical thrill seeker,

but unfortunately, his lifelong love affair with drugs

meant that he'd always have one foot inside the jailhouse door.

After Jung's arrest, he was sentenced to 60 years,

but that was reduced to just 20

when he agreed to testify against Carlos Lehder,

his friend from prison

and the man who had introduced him to Pablo Escobar.

Lehder cofounded the Medellín Cartel with Escobar

in the 1970s.

This small outfit of street thugs

quickly became one of the world's

highest earning businesses,

bringing in upwards of 25 billion dollars a year.

They now needed hardworking, respectable-looking people

to fill middle management positions.

So Lehder,

and one of the cartel's US money men, Alvaro Triana,

tried to persuade a childhood friend, Carlos Toro,

to take one of the more legitimate posts

within the business.

But could this educated, law-abiding man be swayed?

Carlos had approached you a number of times

to join his organisation, and you had said no.

-I said no. -What made you change your mind?

Greed.

That's a hard question to answer.

I was... I had a good job.

I was making a decent living,

middle class in New York City.

I had an apartment on Lexington and 82nd Street.

I was young, I was single.

It was a good life. It was a good life.

But every now and then,

when Carlos sent me his private airplane to LaGuardia Airport,

and I went there to spend a weekend...

...I landed on a different planet.

It was red carpet.

It was millionaires,

beautiful women...

...marijuana, cocaine.

It was fun.

I wanted it.

Trust me. I'm not going to lie to you.

I wanted that kind of living.

But I was scared to death.

And I told Carlos many times...

..."I won't do it because I'm afraid to get caught."

"I will not join you,

only because I don't want any part of cocaine.

I don't want to be caught with cocaine.

I don't want to be part of the cocaine, the product itself.

It scares the shit out of me."

What broke the deal,

and why I accepted the deal,

is because Carlos said to me - through Alvaro Triana -

"You will be our public relations manager."

My job description was very simple.

You are to go anywhere you want to.

We are going to provide you with an airplane and a pilot,

and you go and find us landing strips.

You go and tell heads of government

to let us land in your country.

I would travel to Mexico City quite often,

and I would meet with heads of the military.

I would travel to the United States,

and then we would hire people inside the FAA,

Federal Aviation Administration, that we were paying.

It was those people in the FAA

that would let us know...

where the DEA was nearby,

so we would, you know,

reroute, or land, or airdrop the loads.

So that was my job.

And...

...Carlos kept his promise.

I was never involved in cocaine.

And the thing was that I was in denial.

I was not a criminal.

No, I was a public relations manager.

And my plan was short-term, to myself and to my wife.

I said, "Look, honey,

it's going to be just six months to a year."

"We make 2 million dollars... we're done."

That was my goal.

But you didn't leave.

Oh, I left.

But when I left...

...it was under very strange circumstances.

After three years in the cartel,

Carlos's relationship with his increasingly erratic employers

began to sour.

Carlos discovered that Triana was helping himself to the money

that he needed to pay his pilots.

Unable to carry out his job effectively, Carlos wanted out.

All he asked for was the money he was owed.

In those days, they owed me 1,525,000 dollars.

But every week I was calling Triana.

"Where's my money?"

"Where's my money? Where's my money?"

He would hang up on me.

One day, I ran into his brother.

And I said, "Look, tell him that on my father's grave...

...I would never have snitched on him or any of you,

but you give me my money."

Archie calls me an hour later.

"Carlos. Hey, buddy, I've got some money for you.

I'm going to send so-and-so, this gentleman.

Meet him at a bar."

"At 7 o'clock tonight, he's giving you the money,

the 100,000 dollars I'm sending."

"And with that, give me a week; I'll give you the rest."

I went there.

I said, "Monstruo, how much is in here?"

He said, "100,000 dollars."

"OK, thanks. Bye."

I put the money in my car and I went to my office.

So I went in, put the light on, and I opened the bag.

There was nothing but newspapers...

...and maybe 200 dollars in one-dollar bills on top.

And I went nuts.

I opened the safe,

I pulled out a revolver and I went to Archie's house.

Fortunately, the garage was open.

I drove right in.

His maid, Juliana, came up to the garage.

She saw me and she panicked.

I said to her, "Where is that son of a bitch?"

He was sitting in a chair,

drinking a glass of Scotch and ice.

He turned around and he said,

"Who the fuck do you think you are, coming into my house?

You don't work for me any more," blah-blah-blah.

And I had the bag with me, and I threw it at his face.

The dollar bills flew all over the place.

He picked up an Uzi machine gun.

Right then and there,

I had never used a gun.

I had never been trained to use the gun.

I pulled my revolver. I shot three times.

I just... panicked.

His chair flips over and falls back.

His bodyguard comes in,

and he's pointing the shotgun at me.

And I pulled the gun on him and I said,

"We all die here. We all die.

Please don't use it. We're all going to die here."

His own bodyguard says,

"Carlos, finish the job, man. Finish it."

I couldn't.

I couldn't. So I jump on him.

He's trying to talk,

but he doesn't realise that his jaw is kind of hanging.

I called him up and said,

"I need you here right away."

"I don't know if he's alive, but he's going to die.

He's bleeding. Get your ass in here."

The doctor comes up.

He says, "Carlos, we've got to get him to hospital."

I said, "Are you kidding?"

So I called my pilot.

I said, "I need to get him to hospital in Colombia."

I fell to my knees,

praying to that God that I had abandoned.

I find out through my family in Colombia

that Archie was at La Soma Hospital in Medellín,

that he made it.

At that moment,

I didn't care for that 1,527,000 dollars owed to me.

You were just happy your childhood friend was alive.

And that I was alive.

So I called Carlos and I sent him a message.

"It's OK."

"It's OK. We're done."

If only it were that easy.

All Carlos wanted was to return to an ordinary life,

but that was not to be.

He soon found himself locked in a police cell,

interrogated for 16 hours about the horrific murder

of a 21-year-old woman he knew.

"Her body was found three blocks from here to your house,

decapitated,

with 27 stab wounds,

and left in the trunk of her car.

And from what we have investigated,

you may have been the last person that saw her alive."

So, you know, they're trying to break me.

And they broke me to a point, and this is what I said,

and it was recorded.

"I'll tell you what...

...to show my honesty,

I confess that I have done some things wrong in the past.

Like, I helped my friend, Carlos Lehder,

with some aviation things.

That's the worst that I have ever done."

I don't know why I said that.

So you have worked for the Medellín Cartel,

you've kept your mouth shut for years and years,

without any trouble whatsoever,

you've shot someone, you've kept your mouth shut,

you kept your cool,

and then something happens that you didn't even do,

and you start talking about drug trafficking.

I'm into my 16-hour interrogation...

OK, so you're tired.

That's what my attorney called...

..."a confession under duress".

OK.

After letting slip his former involvement

with the Medellín Cartel,

the murder enquiry was conveniently dropped.

Carlos was now facing

serious drug trafficking charges instead.

Desperate to avoid prison, he made a deal,

offering to turn on his ex-colleagues

and help the DEA go after his old friend Carlos Ledher.

It was a trade. It was a negotiation.

So it was a give and take.

I had given something. What was in it for me?

And I was waiting for what was in it for me.

I knew that Carlos Lehder, at this very moment,

is the most wanted man.

Carlos has left Colombia and is hiding in the Chilean jungle.

So you are potentially facing a prison sentence

for drug...

-15 years mandatory. -15 years mandatory.

And the DA are offering you to go undercover

in order to bust the guy that you had a falling out with.

What were you...?

What was your reasoning process at this point?

What were you feeling?

So there were two elements

that made me feel strong about my decision to help the DA.

One, Carlos was disloyal to me.

He was my friend, my brother, my school chum,

but he was the guy that ordered Triana to kill me.

He crossed me.

So there wasn't loyalty anymore.

And number two,

I want to spend the rest of my life with my family.

By agreeing to testify against Lehder,

Carlos thought the DEA would then let him go.

But George Jung got there first.

Jung's testimony was enough to convict Lehder

without Carlos ever needing to take the stand.

His face was kept out of the papers,

and the DEA found a new use for him -

as an undercover informant.

I'm sitting at my house

in the United States.

The phone rings.

It's headquarters.

They said, "Carlos, we need you to go

to Casablanca, Morocco, tomorrow."

So I go to bed

and I start preparing myself

for who I'm going to be tomorrow...

Today, I'm Carlos Toro.

I'm sleeping with my wife in my bed and this is me.

But tomorrow, I'm going to be somebody else.

It is through that long trip, flying from Miami to London

or Paris to Casablanca,

that I transform to a point where,

when I arrive in Casablanca, I'm not Carlos Toro.

Not even a shadow of Carlos Toro.

I'm a drug dealer and I'm a pilot.

There was a metamorphosis.

I had a different name, a different nationality,

a different passport.

I have put a lot of money on the table,

a lot of cocaine on the table.

And I did that for 27 years.

So you actually did a complete reversal

in terms of your life.

At one stage, you are working for the drug traffickers

and now you're working for the drug traffickers' enemy,

putting away other drug traffickers.

In my job as an undercover agent,

I made friends with them.

I broke bread with them.

We went to parties, we went to church.

We take them down and I get home that evening,

and I don't feel good.

-You felt guilty. -I had been there.

I had been in their shoes. It's not easy.

It's a very different equation to manage.

But it all falls down to survival.

The first year is difficult...

...so is the second.

But after the third or fourth or fifth year...

...you realise that you're good at it.

Had I not been an aid to the Medellín Cartel...

...and a friend of Carlos Lehder,

a negotiator for Carlos Lehder,

had I not had that exposure,

I could never have been the successful DEA that I had been.

So that made you the ideal undercover agent.

Yes.

I'm one of few in the last 27 years.

Most of them either quit or got arrested,

or did something wrong, or got killed within three years.

Once he had completed enough assignments to "pay his dues",

Carlos made a monumental decision:

he began to work for the DEA, by choice.

Travelling the world to set up bogus deals,

Carlos risked his life to infiltrate corrupt governments

and bring down major traffickers.

But now, after nearly three decades of service,

he feels the DEA hasn't reciprocated his loyalty.

If you are being told by the DEA...

..."Help us with this and we'll give you this,"

it's a one-way street, it's a one-sided deal.

On April 9th, 2015, I got very sick.

But I have no insurance,

because I live with a bunch of IDs and names,

and I live in many countries.

But I never worry about it,

because I've been with the DEA for 27 years.

So I called my boss and I said...

"Armando...

...I need to have surgery tomorrow,

but I am in urgent need of 10,000 dollars."

"No problem, Carlos. I'll get it for you."

I check into the hospital.

The next day he calls me.

"Homeland Security denied your request."

"You've got to be kidding me."

And my doctor is telling me, "Have the surgery or die."

So what do I do? I resign.

I said, "No more. I've had it."

So do you know what happens?

I get a call.

"Say, Carlos, we've got some problems.

You are no longer a citizen of the United States

and you are deportable."

So the DEA lied to me for 27 years.

If they deported you to Colombia,

what would happen to you?

I would be dead.

I know I was a criminal...

...but I have paid my dues to the United States

over and over again.

You worked for the Medellín Cartel,

which was one of the most destructive

criminal organisations in the world.

It's responsible for large-scale corruption,

human rights abuses, torture, murder.

You were part of that process,

and then you started to fight against it.

Have you changed as a person?

For three years - or close to three years -

I took a departure from the Carlos Toro...

I took a departure from my family, from my children.

All because of greed.

I have recognised that that departure

has been the biggest mistake of my life.

And no matter how many people are put away,

put in jail, or try to atone working for a government...

...I'll never make it right.

What do you regret most in your life, looking back?

Having met Carlos Lehder.

How would your life have been if you hadn't met Carlos Lehder?

I don't know...

But it would have been something I would be proud of.

I feel for Carlos and what his life has become -

his one wrong decision led him into the cartel

and into the hands of the DEA.

Then he chose to stay on in the same dirty game

leading to a lifetime of sadness and regret.

What followed was a double life

of constant fear, lies and duplicity.

While smooth-talking, intellect and international connections

might help in the upper echelons of the cartel's US operations,

the equation south of the border is far simpler and more brutal.

It's in countries such as my former home, Colombia,

that the true price of cocaine trafficking is paid...

...in corruption, torture,

and rivers of blood.

And few men have spilled more blood

than Escobar's most notorious assassin...

...now a free man after two decades behind bars...

...and the only high-ranking member of the cartel

who's somehow still alive

and walking the streets of Medellín.

Despite his disarming frankness,

John Jairo Velásquez's psychopathic lack of remorse

left me cold.

But was it true what he had said?

That it's always a woman

who ends up destroying a cocaine cartel.

Well, that's precisely the story of former beauty queen

and airline stewardess Pilar Angel.

A woman who took revenge, and then some.

You're hanging out with Pablo Escobar,

El Mexicano from the Medellín Cartel.

You're hanging out with the Cali Cartel,

Mighuel, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela.

What sort of lifestyle did you have?

Oh, my God!

You know, it was like airplanes, boats, cars.

I mean, anything you can think of, they had. Anything.

I remember the Mexican.

He had a toilet for his favourite horse.

The toilet paper in his house had his initials.

Everything was like, "Wow!"

This is when I was a flight... Oh, how cute I look!

This is when I was a flight attendant for Braniff,

a job that I loved.

And I always worked first class.

And one of the flight attendants said to me,

"You have to see the man sitting in 3A," for instance.

So I look at him and I said, "Not bad."

So when we were landing in Bogotá,

he came over when I was sitting in the jump seat

and he said, "Can you have dinner with me tonight?"

I said, "OK."

He was very nice and very polite, very classy,

and that's how it all started.

I never knew what he did,

because he told me that he worked for the CIA.

-That was what he told you? -Yes.

So at what point did you realise that he wasn't -

that he was actually a drug trafficker?

Well, when he asked me to take two suitcases to Miami,

I said, "What do they have?"

He said, "Don't worry."

And I carried the two suitcases.

They had eight kilos each.

You knew the dangers about drug trafficking, and you could die.

Oh, yes. Yes.

And yet you became a drug mule.

Well, I would do anything for my husband.

I just wanted to please him. That's all.

Anything he wanted me to do, I would do anything.

Don't ask me, "What else?"

How big a drug trafficker was your husband?

I think he was very big.

He used to be the transportation of the Mexican, period.

So the Mexican is a member of the Medellín Cartel.

Yes. Very big. Very, very big.

So your husband tricked you into becoming a drug mule.

Yes.

And he used to beat me up every other day, if I can say.

-It was-- -He was violent?

Violent? Look at these holes in my head.

Wow! Your husband did that to you?

Yes. He was horrible.

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

He was crazy,

and he used to tell people he was Jesus Christ.

He used to go around with a white robe.

He used to bring women to the house, kick me out,

buy them cars, buy them Rolexes, buy them...

I never, ever said a word.

After years of abuse, Pilar finally left Ernesto.

Even so, she vowed to keep his criminal activity a secret.

However, as George Jung said,

if you stay in this game long enough,

someone, at some point, will tell on you.

And after a complex set of circumstances,

Pilar decided to trade Ernesto in.

After her divorce, Pilar married again,

to yet another drug trafficker.

When this husband was arrested and imprisoned,

he told the DEA to speak to Pilar

in a bid to reduce his sentence.

So the DEA knocked on her door...

...and Ernesto's days were numbered.

So, tell me about the operation that you used

to trap your husband.

I called him in Bogotá. "Hi, how are you? Oh, great."

So I said, "Listen, my boyfriend is from Chicago

and he has a company that does transportation.

Do you still need transport?" He said, "Of course."

"OK. Can you meet me next week on Saturday in Caracas?

I'll introduce you to Rick."

And Richard was, in fact, a DEA agent.

-Rick Morris, yes. -Rick.

Rick was going to provide transportation to him.

So then I had nothing to do.

I always said, "I'll go fishing.

I'll take the fish off it. You do the rest." And that's it.

Ernesto and Rick met in Venezuela.

Suspecting nothing,

Ernesto asked Rick to ship 100 kilos of cocaine to the US.

But once the shipment arrived in Florida,

Rick pulled his gun and badge and placed Ernesto under arrest.

So they call me and they say,

"Hey, we're going to give him ten years. Is that OK?"

And I said, "He could do 20, but that's OK."

I don't believe in revenge, but this time I said,

"Forget it. I'm going to revenge him."

And revenge tasted sweet.

Pilar didn't stop there.

She now went after her ex-husband's cartel colleagues.

With the backing of the DEA,

she took on the role of a wealthy money launderer

and used her wiles to lure her prey.

Were you an employee of the DEA?

Officially, no.

I was more of a CI, but the--

-Confidential Informant. -Yes.

But the thing is,

I suggested to them to do the money laundry,

because I wasn't going to be doing drugs.

So you would actually design the plans

for the DEA to launder money for the cartels?

Of course, because I had control completely of the situation.

They did and I did, kind of.

You would go down to Colombia

and offer to launder their money for them?

You know, it got to a point that I didn't have to go down there,

because everything was word of mouth.

The minute I got the first one, then everybody started jumping.

If I did a good job with this one,

he would give the numbers to that one, so it was...

I used to go there

because I was trying to get into Chupeta.

I was this close.

Chupeta is Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía.

Yes, exactly.

And he is one of the biggest drug traffickers

in Colombian history.

I will say yes.

When the government finally caught up to him in Brazil,

they estimated he had 1.8 billion dollars.

Well, I'm not surprised.

Let me tell you something about him.

He wanted a dog, a dogo from Argentina.

I spent 5,000 dollars for the dog,

flew it to Colombia

and gave it to his assistant.

But that was my way of getting in to them.

"Do you want this? You can have it.

You want to come to the States?

I'll have them clear your... your entrance."

How much money were you laundering for the cartels?

I think, in total, I laundered, like, 120 million.

-A hundred and twenty million? -I think so.

And I think they confiscated 80 million, I think.

They confiscated 80 million dollars?

When the DEA confiscates money, what happens to that money?

I really don't know what they do with it.

What I know is that if you made them choose money versus drugs,

they will take the money.

And I always said that

because I worked for them, I worked with them.

You have to pick up 100 kilos of cocaine

versus 500,000 dollars - where would they go?

To the money. I'm telling you.

That's why, when they lost money,

they would jump and get upset.

They didn't get upset because they lost 100 kilos of cocaine.

They never did, because it cost them nothing.

So, do you see the DEA as being a kind of business?

I wouldn't say business,

but I will say they choose what they want.

And what they want is money.

Pilar's undercover work contributed to the extradition

of several high-level traffickers,

including Escobar's rivals in the notorious Cali Cartel.

But one thing truly surprised me.

Pilar's laundering commissions

and a percentage

of cash seizures

were then used to fund further DEA operations.

So not only

were the DEA assisting

the traffickers they were supposed to be imprisoning,

but their discretionary budget almost became dependent on it -

a vicious cycle at least,

if not a conflict of interest.

Carlos Toro felt he'd been tricked

into risking his life for decades,

and now Pilar's story only made me more cynical

about the Drug Enforcement Administration.

But what about their agents out in the field?

Were they indifferent to the lives of their informants?

And was money what really drove them?

I decided to seek out

two of their most highly respected former agents.

This is 1979.

I'm the youngest guy in the department.

"Hey, Mike, we need a narc."

I loved working undercover.

You know, it was like living the lifestyle of a James Bond.

The streets of South Florida were flooded with cocaine.

Dadeland shootings.

Murders, Colombian cartels coming into Miami.

I'd be in Rio de Janeiro one day.

I'd be in Mexico City.

I found it really phenomenal to be playing cat and mouse

with some of the most ruthless drug traffickers in the world.

My partner gets kidnapped.

We get involved in a shoot-out.

I end up going home that night and telling my wife,

"I now know what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I'm going to put every one of these motherfuckers in jail."

And if I'm going to really take this serious,

I've got to go bigger.

And bigger is DEA.

How much do you hate the traffickers

and how much do you hate drugs?

I hate drug traffickers because they poison our youth.

You know, they basically destroy,

you know, economic and political fabrics

and they undermine fledgling democracy.

So they do untold damage

not only to the United States,

but to many countries around the world.

DEA looks at the drug war from a different perspective

than many local police.

We look at it as,

we've just arrested that trafficker in your community.

Now, who is his source of supply?

Who is giving him the drugs?

Where did his money go?

We look at it from a bigger perspective.

And not only are we looking at it domestically

in the United States,

we're looking to feed intelligence

to our agents all across the world.

We want to be able to take down

as much of an organisation as we can at one time

and put them out of business.

And nobody walks in and hands us a file

like a bank robbery and says, "Here, solve it."

We have to go out and find these crimes and solve these crimes,

and arrest these bad guys.

The way I would penetrate a lot of these organisations

is usually through an undercover introduction by an informant,

somebody that they trusted.

We've got to be very creative in what we do.

Whether it be supplying chemicals

to these organisations;

whether it be laundering their money.

We would fly around the world, picking up their money,

to be able to understand the banking system

and the way they manipulate it and worked.

Once the introduction was made, I would cut the informant out

and I would take it from there,

and try to penetrate the organisation

to the upper levels.

We were doing a lot of what we call reverse stings.

We would get people coming down from Chicago, New York, LA,

to buy marijuana.

A sting is when you go in and you pretend to be the buyer.

A reverse sting is when you pretend to be the seller.

Correct.

I'm just not interested in seizing 300 keys of coke.

My goal is to put the bad guys in jail.

I'm the middleman.

I'm controlling it.

Because, ultimately,

I want to identify the distribution network

in the United States.

So the DEA is basically trying to get involved

at every single stage of the illegal drug trade,

from the chemical manufacturing,

the production side,

their transport apparatus, their distribution network.

Those are all the different strands

that the DEA is attacking.

We were only limited by our imagination.

I want to be able to beat you at your own game,

and I have to play by the rules and you don't.

That's the challenge for me.

It is a game of chess.

You're pitting your intellect

against the cunning of major drug traffickers,

and you can't afford to be nervous

when you're dealing with these individuals,

because they can sense fear.

They can sense nervousness.

And a bead of sweat on your forehead

can actually lead to your death.

I remember on one occasion

I was wearing what we call the KEL unit.

It's a wide belt

which contained the mic that was usually taped to your chest.

And then it had nine-volt batteries in there.

And the battery started to leak acid...

...and it started to burn my stomach area,

and I mean severely,

but, you know, I couldn't flinch.

You know, it smelled like barbecue.

A barbecue pit.

So you have to have a very strong mind-set.

You know that you can recover from the burn,

but you're not going to recover from a bullet to your head.

When going undercover, how would you prepare yourself,

in terms of getting dressed and mentally prepare yourself

to go into that extreme psychological situation?

I converted myself psychologically

into a drug trafficker, 100 percent.

I would play the part.

I would buy Italian loafers,

you know, gold chains,

diamond-studded pendants.

The role was that you exuded wealth and money and power,

and that is one of the things

that major drug traffickers understand.

Can you tell me the most dangerous undercover operation

that you have ever been involved in?

I was in Miami.

My partner and I were buying six ounces of cocaine.

I'm in Caborca, Sonora, Mexico.

I started to negotiate for several tonnes of marijuana.

Two of the traffickers said,

"Let's go, and we'll show you the cocaine."

One of the traffickers tells me, "I'll take the informant.

I'm going to go and pick up the marijuana

and I'll be right back."

So my partner got up and went to look at the cocaine,

and ultimately never came back.

The other individual sitting there with me,

he's telling me, he says,

"Look, if you're a Federal Agent,

we're going to kill you."

As I'm walking out the door to go get the rest of the money...

...I realise that this is going bad.

All of a sudden, I see one of the Mex Feds by the window

and he's going like this.

You know, giving me these hand gestures, like, "What's up?"

So I give the typical bust signal -

both my hands through the hair.

Nothing happens.

Sure enough, we're walking out,

and the same Fed that was giving me the gestures

pulls out his gun

and sticks it into the chest of the trafficker.

There was a bad guy here and a bad guy here.

Bad guy number two over here

goes inside his waistband and pulls a gun out.

Trafficker grabs the barrel

and hits the Fed right in the forehead.

And I saw a spray of dark red blood

go up in the air in a mist.

I pull my gun out

and grab bad guy number two by the hair.

All of a sudden, the trafficker turns to me

and he fires two rounds very rapidly.

In the struggle of holding bad guy number one,

bad guy number two tried to shoot me.

I could hear the bullets whistle by my left ear.

I took my weapon,

and I came across the bad guy's head,

and I broke the wrist of the other bad guy.

I returned fire

and I hit him twice in the chest,

and he gasped as he fell onto the ground on his back.

At that time, my surveillance agents came in.

And as it was,

it was six ounces of flour,

and it was a drug rip-off.

You spend months undercover,

or sometimes up to years working on a specific case,

where you are obviously trying to win

someone's trust and confidence.

How do you feel when you finally get your guy?

You know, you have to be very careful,

because sometimes they are just like most psychopaths.

You know, they have great personalities.

You know, you have to be careful

that you don't become a friend to them

and all of a sudden, you know,

that you... you know,

don't want to put them in jail.

What's the typical reaction of someone

when they are finally caught and they realise

that they have been tricked by a DEA agent?

You're not who you said you were.

Well, often, the bad guy

who you have been undercover with for six months says,

"Mike, I thought you were my friend."

And you have to tell them, "No.

I'm a Federal Agent working undercover."

The key is to treat that person with respect,

because now you are going to potentially be an asset for me.

And, if you want to help yourself,

I'm going to give you that opportunity.

As an example, George Jung from the movie Blow,

we arrested him with 300 keys of coke.

He was looking at multiple counts, at 15 years per count.

As a result of his co-operation,

his sentence was reduced to five years.

There are several different types of informants.

You have a mercenary informant.

The mercenary informant is doing it for the money.

Then there is the defendant informant.

Carlos Toro was a defendant informant first.

Carlos Toro says, "I don't want to go to jail.

What do I have to do to get out of jail?"

So, then you have the revenge informant.

This is the guy

that wants to put his competitor out of business.

These are the most dangerous.

How horrific are these tortures

that the cartels practice upon informants?

The tortures are horrific.

For example, there is one torture method

that the Medellín Cartel used,

Pablo Escobar in particular,

which they call the "Colombian necktie."

And what they would do

is they would slit the throat of the victim

and then pull out his tongue through that slit,

and it would hang like a necktie.

When I was in Medellin, Colombia

during the heyday of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel,

a lot of my informants -

in fact, I would say virtually all of them -

were killed by the Cartel.

They would shoot them. But they would brutally torture them.

I remember, I would leave my house in the morning

and there were dead bodies strewn alongside the roadway.

I would come back in the evening

and those cadavers were still on the road,

because the authorities could not keep up

with the number of homicides

that were being committed in that city.

It was just...

Violence was the namesake of Medellin Cartel at that time.

Drug trafficking, in my opinion,

is the most potent and virulent form of terrorism

that exists in the world.

And when you take a look at some of these organisations,

you know, they make ISIS,

you know, look like a bunch of choir boys.

How violent are the Mexican cartels

in comparison with the Colombian cartels?

The Mexican cartels

are one of the most violent cartels that I have ever seen,

but we have to keep in mind

that they were tutored by the Colombians

in terms of exerting violence.

The Colombians taught them, if you do violence,

do it in a horrific way,

and this way you intimidate the authorities

in terms of not taking action against you.

So that led to a tremendous amount of violence in Mexico,

and the violence continues.

From 2006, when Felipe Calderon became the president,

to the present time,

there have been easily 150,000 people killed

as a result of the efforts against the Mexican cartels

in that country.

Would it be fair to say that...

Let's say that you are successful

in terms of interdiction, prosecution, military operations

in one country or one region.

It might be Colombia. It might be Bolivia.

It might be the Caribbean.

You squeeze that balloon and the air is still in the balloon,

it just goes to a different country.

-Is that a fair comment? -Yes.

They find another way of getting it in in another place

and a way of doing business.

Because we were putting so much pressure on South Florida,

the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, these different regions,

they made a natural migration over to Mexico

and Central America

and thus started the problems that we see now.

Looking back over the course of the War on Drugs,

are there any mistakes that the DEA has made?

Wow.

My initial gut reaction is to tell you... no.

I really believe the DEA

has always done the right thing for the right reasons.

So the US government goes after the Medellín Cartel,

kills Pablo Escobar.

They extradite the leaders of the Cali Cartel.

They then dismantle Norte del Valle in Colombia.

The problem then gets transferred,

and perhaps even made worse in Mexico.

Mike Vigil, can you put your hand on your heart

and say that we're winning the War on Drugs?

I'm going to say that we are more determined than they are.

You know, they do...

They are determined in terms of intimidation,

but the fact of the matter is that, you know,

justice may be blind, but she certainly has a very long reach.

I walked out of DEA headquarters June 25th, 2004,

and the last person I spoke to

after turning my gun and badge in

was the security guard at the front door.

He says, "Mike, what are you doing?"

I said, "This is it. I'm done. I retired today."

Now, I had an apartment two blocks away.

That was the longest walk of my life.

Because this was not about what I did for a living.

This is about who I was.

And when you turn in that gun

and you turn in that badge,

and that's it, it's tough.

If I had a thousand lives,

I would have done this for a thousand lifetimes.

And, quite frankly...

...I probably would have done it for free.

I went in expecting to dislike

these upholders of the establishment.

But I came away having met two brave, honest men,

who are passionate believers in their work...

...even to the point of addiction.

Mike and Mike played key roles in the DEA's war on drugs

by infiltrating and ultimately bringing down

the Medellin and Cali cartels,

and closing down their trafficking routes

into the Caribbean.

But they could never have predicted

that these successful operations -

which the DEA hoped would have lasting, positive effects -

would help fuel

the dramatic destabilisation of Central America

over the next two decades.

With the Caribbean closed off,

producers were now looking for new paths into the US -

and they turned to Mexico's crime lords for assistance.

In the 1980s,

the Guadalajara cartel reigned supreme on the American border.

With politicians on their pay roll

and heroin and marijuana trafficking routes

already established,

they were perfectly positioned

to take advantage of the Colombians' logistical problems.

At first, the Colombians paid cash

to access the border crossings.

But soon, the Guadalajara Cartel demanded product as payment,

becoming major traffickers themselves

and marking a radical shift in criminal power and wealth

from Colombia to Mexico.

The DEA, playing catch-up,

scored what appeared to be a major victory,

when their informants led them

to a huge marijuana operation belonging to the cartel.

But their best intentions only led to more chaos

and bloodshed...

Seeking to destroy the DEA's network of informants,

the Godfather of the Guadalajara Cartel,

Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo,

had DEA Agent Enrique Camarena kidnapped, brutally tortured

and murdered.

In retaliation,

the DEA launched an extensive operation

to capture Camarena's killers, forcing Gallardo into hiding.

With the full might of the DEA now bearing down on him,

Gallardo decided to protect his empire

by splitting it amongst his capos.

One cartel became five -

including the Sinaloa Cartel,

headed up by the infamous

"El Chapo"-

and an unprecedented wave of violence broke out

as the new cartels battled for supremacy,

fighting between themselves and new challengers.

A change in government for the first time in 70 years

further destabilised the country.

And so the insanity continues to this day.

Every breakthrough, every cartel defeated,

every kingpin taken out

is followed by yet more death and sorrow,

as a new generation of increasingly ruthless criminals

step in to take their place.

The US government continues to pump billions of dollars

into the war on drugs,

upping the ante with more guns and military force.

The war rages on and on.

The question is, by using the same strategy,

is this a fight that can ever be won?

To find out,

I'm heading to the US for the final leg of my journey

to speak to a highly respected soldier

who fought on the front line of the drug war

and gained extensive insights into this complex world...

You are flying very low level

and going through some mountainsides and stuff.

Keep the noise down.

It's being shielded by the mountains.

You will get an indication. "Hey, we're ten minutes out.

We're five minutes out. We're one minute out."

You will be sitting right at the doorway of the helicopter.

You're just ready to kick it out.

The helicopter comes to a hover.

"Go, go, go."

Grab a hold, slide down.

The next guy slides down, slides down.

You get down to the bottom,

and you will fan out in a 360-degree perimeter.

Now, if you're not already engaged in a firefight,

you're going to sit there for a bit,

look, listen, feel, smell - whatever.

And after about five minutes,

you will patrol toward your target.

We're moving through the jungle.

We're going to go hit a laboratory.

But going through the jungle,

that's a little bit difficult,

so oftentimes you're stacked one behind the other.

And you've got one guy online,

maybe two guns online

as a second guy comes off to the side,

but everyone else is right behind.

We're going to come in fast.

We're going to come in silent...

until we go loud.

And once we go loud,

then it doesn't go silent again until it's over.

Adam Newbold was a Navy SEAL for 22 years.

After making it through the gruelling SEALs training,

Adam was put into action

in some of the harshest terrain on the planet,

pushed to the limit of skill and endurance.

As well as being a member of the team

that tracked and killed Osama bin Laden,

Adam spent years carrying out missions in South America,

helping to smash drug-trafficking networks.

But it's only since returning home

that he has reflected on the war he's been fighting,

and whether it's actually working.

["The Star-Spangled Banner" playing]

Thank you, bartender.

You bet.

A really tight-knit community here in Lisbon.

Small-town USA for sure.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

Small town. You know, kind of a depressed area.

The industry that used to be here

that made this town grow 100 years ago

has long since gone.

There's nothing to do around here, OK?

In a lot of these small towns, there's nothing to do.

There's not even a movie theatre.

So young folks,

and not only young folks,

they end up going to the bars and drinking,

which, you know, that's fine, but without any other options.

I was watching the news last night

and they found another couple

that had just overdosed on drugs in the front seat of the car,

and a kid was in the back.

Yeah, and that's the next town over,

just south of here, East Liverpool.

It's really scary.

When I was a kid, people would drink.

You know, you drink some beers.

But now it's crack cocaine and heroin.

And heroin's...

heroin's hardcore and it's everywhere.

It's unreal. It's unreal how bad it is.

You know, I think they have found

these small towns in America...

...as a secret spot or an untapped market,

because everything used to be in the big cities.

And, for me, to see how that's grown,

and, you know, from where working

down in Central and South America

and then to see it up here

and the effects of these different things...

...it's pretty disheartening.

So what sort of operations would you be sent on?

Well, you know our job is...

...whatever it takes to win a war in an unconventional manner.

If the unconventional forces don't do it, we do it.

I was Country Action Officer for Colombia and Panama.

I've been in Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia.

So I spent a lot of time in South America.

My job was

to co-ordinate and train their forces, police,

and special forces, military, on how they could...

...fight our drug war.

And...

And it can be tough,

because you have folks

that really don't care about our drug war.

The only reason they cared about doing what we wanted them to do

is because we were giving them a lot of money.

Can I ask you a question as a soldier?

If you are getting... enlisting other people to fight your war,

but they haven't got their heart in it,

can they be effective soldiers?

They can be effective,

but I'll tell you what, it's difficult when...

when you are training someone

and, you know,

a drug cartel

or someone working in that business

is paying them more money.

Twice as much or ten times as much

just to give them a call whenever...

...you know, whenever we're coming.

So you're training and equipping and financing a group

that's going against drug traffickers.

And then, on the other side, the enemy has got more cash

and they're...

-Yeah. -...bribing them to...

Yeah.

...to inform on you.

But, believe me,

if we think we're being effective...

We've collected tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of cocaine.

But when there's one speedboat that you interdict,

there's ten more that go right on by.

So, you know, we're having a very, very little

or small impact on... on that.

Because if I can get cocaine in Colombia for two bucks

and I can sell it in Australia for 300, that's a...

Where do you find a profit margin like that?

Adam, how well-equipped

and how strong are the cartels militarily?

They are very well-equipped.

It's scary how well-equipped they are.

It's more scary...

It's far more scary

how well-trained they are becoming.

And not only are they equipped and trained, they are violent.

I...

I was involved in an...

...investigation of sorts in Mexico...

...where there were ten bodies,

and one of the girls was probably 13 years old,

maybe 12 - young...

...and one of the boys about the same age.

And...

...they were all bound and shot in the back of the head.

Just executed.

They were poor folks from a small town.

You know, the clothes they were wearing,

they were pretty ragged,

who were trying to better their life.

And the drugs didn't make it, and neither did they.

But...

those drugs, they're coming to the US still.

That's where they were coming and that's where they ended up.

So the drugs were always going to get here,

but along the way, poor people are dying.

Poor people are dying.

They are dying in transport,

they are dying in production,

they are dying in use.

So now they get to this country,

and folks go out,

and they will pay for them and they will use them,

and they have no idea what...

...what it took to get those drugs to them.

So what's the answer to this big mess that we have created?

We're the ones that are consuming the drugs

and we're the ones that are persecuting the war on drugs

in other countries.

What do we do about this big mess?

We've got to change our strategy.

Yeah, we put the pressure on. We keep the pressure on them.

But there has to be a worldwide campaign...

...inviting another generation

to look differently at... at this stuff.

To take pride in their mind and their body

and... just not... not engage in that type of lifestyle

and utilising those drugs,

because if the demand is there...

...what are we going to do?

We're just going to... The war will be never-ending.

And it has been. It's never-ending.

For 22 years,

Adam lived a life of a highly trained military machine,

and came out the other side

with incredibly rounded and impartial viewpoints.

I found his personal journey surprising

and inspirational.

Looking back on my own journey,

I realised that the stories I've heard

all share similar elements.

Just like cocaine addicts,

the people I met experienced the highest highs

and the lowest lows.

The smuggler.

The trafficker.

The launderer.

The lawmen.

The cartel man.

The cold-blooded killer.

Each and every one of them locked into a life

that wouldn't exist without cocaine.

Each one driven by the danger,

adrenaline, and spoils offered by this dirty game.

But what kind of world have they left us, as a result?

Whether the solution to the war on drugs

lies in education or legalisation,

it's clear to me that something needs to change

to end the grip cocaine has on users in the West

and families just trying to stay alive

in Central and South America.

George Jung said that they had created a monster.

Well, that monster is still on the loose today.

And if we in the West

can't curb our appetite for this insidious white powder,

these stories of corruption,

betrayal, revenge and death

will repeat themselves for generations to come.

[music ascending]

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