All language subtitles for Great_Escapes_with_Morgan_Freeman_S01E03_El_Chapo_720p_HEVC_x265

- The most violent drug lord
in history.

- Part of El Chapo's rise
is just how ruthless he was.

Innocent people would be caught
in the crossfire.

- The most secure prison
in Mexico.

- Chapo's incarcerated
in Altiplano prison,

which is super-maximum security.

- It was thought
to be impregnable.

- And a daring attempt
to break in.

- A one-mile tunnel.

How would you be able
to pinpoint where to come up?

[dramatic music]

- You can see him pacing back
and forth in the cell,

and then all of a sudden,
he's gone.

♪ ♪

- Some of the greatest stories
ever told start behind bars.

♪ ♪

Locked up in the most
notorious prisons

in the world,

spied on by guards
and fellow prisoners.

It takes a devious mind
to find a way out.

It could lead you to freedom.

Or it could cost you your life.

But wouldn't you try,

when you have nothing left
to lose?

♪ ♪

[tense music]

♪ ♪

This is an isolation cell

in Federal Social Readaptation
Center Number Two,

known as Puente Grande,

just outside
of Guadalajara, Mexico.

To escape means overcoming layer

after layer
of impenetrable walls

and an army of guards
that outnumber the inmates

almost two-to-one.

Seem like overkill?

Not if you're dealing
with a very special class

of criminal--the drug lord.

[helicopter whirring]

Drug lords have
their own private armies,

so the walls of Puente Grande
need to be able to withstand

a full-scale assault
from the outside.

Above the walls,
armed guards and towers

keep an eye on everything

and everyone that comes
and goes from this lock-up.

Any attempt to get in or out
must avoid their watchful eye.

- Puente Grande had
a vast surveillance

and security apparatus.

It was the place that
narco-criminals were sent.

It was thought
to be impregnable.

- This cell is home
to one of the most

notorious and bloodthirsty
narco-criminals

of all time...

Joaquín Guzmán,
known to the world as El Chapo.

♪ ♪

He's a billionaire, a murderer,

and a folk hero.

To the Mexican government,

he's just
public enemy number one.

- El Chapo is the 21st century's

narco-celebrity
of all narco-celebrities.

[chatter]

- If you ask anybody, he's still

the most feared drug trafficker
in the world.

There are places in Mexico

where his name
is just whispered now.

Part of El Chapo's rise
is just how ruthless he was.

There were certainly
tens of thousands,

if not more
that were collateral damage

as a result
of the raging drug war

that he was at the center of.

♪ ♪

- Joaquín Guzmán starts
growing marijuana in 1972,

and rises quickly

in the violent
international drug trade.

By 1989, he's head
of the infamous

Sinaloa Cartel.

But during a bloody turf battle

with a rival cartel,

a beloved Catholic bishop
is killed in the crossfire,

and El Chapo becomes
a wanted man.

- As a result of this,
the Mexican government

mounted a massive manhunt.

[gunfire]

They finally apprehended him
in Guatemala

in June 1993.

And from there, he goes
to Puente Grande prison.

- But despite the prison's
intense security,

Puente Grande doesn't
turn out to be

such a bad place for El Chapo.

♪ ♪

Using his reputation
for brute violence,

plus $2.5 million
worth of bribes,

he soon makes the prison
a comfortable base

from which to run his empire.

- The life that Chapo Guzmán
lived inside Puente Grande

was almost more luxurious
than the Italian gangsters

who were locked up,
you know, in "Goodfellas."

[upbeat music]

He had his pick of liquor,
lobster, women.

He was allowed to have visits
not only from his main wife,

but from his second wife.

He also had a prison girlfriend.

He had--he essentially had
free access to telephones.

And all of this was possible
because he had befriended

the deputy warden for security
of Puente Grande,

a guy named Dámaso López.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

López, who,
in exchange for small gifts,

like cash and a nice house,

essentially gave Chapo Guzmán

the run of Puente Grande.

- At some point, he had paid off

almost every single official
in the prison.

- Chapo was still able
to organize drug shipments,

even though he was within
Puente Grande prison.

♪ ♪

- It's at this time
that El Chapo makes

a brilliant innovation in
the drug-trafficking business.

- How do you get anything
across what is

a heavily-patrolled border?

What if you could evade
detection by going below?

What if you could construct
an easy pathway from Mexico

into the United States,

one that was air conditioned,
one that had lighting,

one that had
an elaborate railcar system

that could transport hundreds,

thousands of kilograms--
Marijuana,

cocaine, heroin,
methamphetamine?

Well, if you could
figure that out,

you'd be a successful man.

A man who pioneers the use

of tunnels to transport
narcotics

across the United States-Mexico
border is El Chapo.

♪ ♪

- He employed highly-skilled
architects and engineers

to design these tunnels for him.

He managed to maintain
an operation

that was netting him

in the neighborhood
of $20 million a month.

Guzmán's empire grew
almost more than it had

before he was incarcerated.

- El Chapo's business savvy
and the intense loyalty

he instills in his underlings

keeps the Sinaloa Cartel
running from behind bars.

But all that is about to change.

- In the mid to late '90s,

Mexico is not extraditing
Mexican nationals

to the United States.

But something changed
beginning in 2001.

The Mexican Supreme Court
issued an opinion saying

that it would
restart extraditions

of Mexican nationals
to the United States.

And Chapo was not having it.

- Hanging around
in his plush prison hideout

is no longer an option.

El Chapo is a sitting duck

if he can't get
out of here--fast.

- Chapo learns that he has
been charged

with drug trafficking crimes
here in the United States,

and he's worried.
He's concerned that

if he gets extradited
in the United States,

he's not gonna have
the same ability

to control his cartel,

give out instructions,
coordinate drug shipments

from inside
a U.S. prison cell.

So he realizes
that he has to get out.

- El Chapo isn't just
the mastermind

of an international drug cartel.

He's also an escape artist.

♪ ♪

He knows he needs
to be very careful

who he confides in
about his plans.

♪ ♪

- What you see is,
within a matter of weeks,

Chapo put together
his escape plan

from Puente Grande Prison.

[suspenseful music]

- He orchestrates a complex
series of getaway vehicles

to be put in place
for his jail break.

He threatens the lives of anyone

who could reveal the plan.

And of course,
he greases a lot of palms.

- For this escape,

he bribed a much
smaller group of officials,

the idea being
the fewer people that know,

the less trouble there will be.

And so ultimately,

he bribed one of the workers,
a man named Chito.

♪ ♪

- It's Chito's job to take
this laundry cart

out of the prison in a van,
and take the laundry

to be cleaned
to bring it back to the prison.

- El Chito, or the Quiet One,
is a perfect accomplice,

since, in his lowly
janitorial position,

he's off the radar
of the other guards.

♪ ♪

[gate squeaks]

- The Quiet One opens
his cell door,

helps him into a cart
of dirty laundry,

conceals him,
walks him out of the cell.

- Chapo knows exactly
how many gates

he has to get through
in order to be free.

Now, at some point,
Chito lets go of the cart

in order to ask one of
the guards to open the gate.

The cart starts rolling back,

and Chapo winds up
being terrified

that the cart
is gonna spill over,

he'll fall out on the floor,

and he'll be sent
right back to prison.

But the cart stays upright.

Chito collects it,
walks out of the prison,

into the parking lot,
opens the trunk

of a Chevy Monte Carlo
that El Chapo hops into,

and then the prison guard
drives him away.

- He's got a head start,

thanks to having
the local police

in his pocket.

But federal law enforcement
gets word of the escape,

and the chase is on.

He still has a long,
dangerous road

ahead of him to safety.

♪ ♪

- He was met by yet another car,

an armored Volkswagen,
so it is said,

from which he was driven
to a place

where he was picked up
in a helicopter.

The helicopter flew him
to yet another location,

where Guzmán got into
a third car,

and made a multi-hour drive
from that secret location

to Mexico City.

Arriving in Mexico City,

Guzmán is said to have looked up

from the back seat
of the vehicle

and seen police squad cars

and motorcycles surrounding him.

♪ ♪

- In the complex web of local,
state, and federal police,

El Chapo can never be 100% sure

who's clean and who's dirty.

- He nervously asks his driver,
"What's going on?"

And he was reassured,
"Don't worry, amigo.

Those are our police."

♪ ♪

- He has his own corrupt
Mexico City police officers

form, essentially,
a motorcade to prevent

any other law enforcement
from stopping Chapo,

and Chapo winds up
going to the safe house

and essentially
starting up again.

♪ ♪

- So the fact that
he was able to escape,

waltz out of
the maximum-security prison

at Puente Grande in 2001

creates the legend of Chapo

as the uncatchable,
the untouchable.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- After his escape
from this cell

at Puente Grande,

El Chapo manages
to stay out of the grip

of the Mexican government
for more than a decade.

- Even though El Chapo
is living as a fugitive

in the remote mountain hideouts

that he has carved out
of these valleys and peaks,

he is able to really become
the narcotrafficker

that we think of him
being today.

In the few years after Guzmán
escaped from Puente Grande

and reignited
his American cocaine

and heroin distribution
organization,

he was able to get almost
a billion dollars of cocaine

to Chicago alone.

- His empire grows by him
doing what he's always done--

Trafficking
ton quantities of drugs

all over the world.

[gunshots]

- It was during this time
that he decided

that the way to control Mexico,

the way to control
drug trafficking,

was to do it violently.

So he went out from Sinaloa,

which is on
the western side of Mexico,

and he sent his soldiers
to places like Ciudad Juarez,

Nuevo Laredo, Nuevo Leon,

and you began to see these
really bloody turf battles

that hadn't existed
in Mexico prior.

You'd see these almost
military-esque war zones

break out.

Gas stations
would be set on fire.

Innocent people would be
caught in the crossfire.

And it was really
just remarkable

to see these pockets of Mexico
that had had peace for so long

really just spiral out
of control

as a result
of El Chapo's violence.

♪ ♪

- By 2014, both the Mexican
and U.S. government

want this guy back behind bars.

The heat is on.

- We just started climbing

the ladder
of the cartel hierarchy.

We looked at
our organizational chart

and organized all efforts
towards Chapo,

because we were able to target
him from multiple angles,

not just one line
of intelligence

but we started targeting
through his pilots,

his sons and family members,
his girlfriends, his spouses.

- The FBI was able to identify
and turn

Guzmán's personal IT man,

a young, twenty-something
Colombian kid.

And through this cooperation
from the IT man,

they hacked into his encrypted
cell phone network.

♪ ♪

[tense music]

- So we had Chapo's location
down to a block radius.

We knew he was holed up
in a safe house,

ad we ended up finding
the safe house

and hitting the door.

[banging]

- Chapo's secretary comes in
and says

that the Mexican military
was there.

And they can literally
hear the banging

on the steel-reinforced door

that was covering
the actual door

to the safe house.

[dramatic music]

- They could see people
moving in the windows

hurriedly through the house.

- So they immediately ran
into the bathroom.

♪ ♪

- But the sneaky El Chapo

is not dashing into
the bathroom to hide.

He's going to escape
through a tunnel.

- After pioneering
the narco-tunnels,

he realized it was just
a cookie-cutter plan.

He could use these
as escape tunnels.

- He's really kind of built up
his tunnel game

without a whole lot of people
knowing about it.

- On the night of the raid,

Guzmán was able to escape
this safe house into a tunnel,

and that tunnel was hidden
beneath a trap door

under a false bathtub

in the bathroom
of the safe house.

There was a switch
on the bathroom wall,

and if you took what was
essentially a paper clip

and you jammed the paper clip

into the electrical outlet
on the wall,

it created an electric current
that went around the seal

and essentially burned out
all the caulking

that sealed the bathtub lid
closed.

And then you had to prop
the bathtub lid open,

and it kind of opened
on a hydraulic hinge,

and beneath that false top

was the entrance to the tunnel

and the ladder going down.

It's remarkable.

♪ ♪

- Because of this
quick escape plan,

Chapo, his girlfriend,
the secretary,

and Chapo's cook,

they all descended
down the stairs

into this network of tunnels,
and they were able to escape

before the Mexican Marines
could get to them.

♪ ♪

- By the time that they got
into the house,

the house was completely empty.

I got there,
saw the reinforced steel door,

and walked through the house,
and came in through a bedroom,

and there were clothes
littered all over,

and drug prescription bottles.

- They found Chapo's
diamond-encrusted pistol,

with his initials on it.
They found a bunch of drugs.

They found, you know,
every accoutrement

you would imagine a drug lord
would have at the ready.

- El Chapo's mastery
of building secret tunnels

has made him a rich man,

and helped him
outrun the police.

And if they ever catch him,

it's a skill that could
really come in handy.

♪ ♪

- In 2014, the bloodthirsty
drug lord El Chapo

is still on the I am.

His reign of terror
has left a trail of corpses

all across Mexico.

The Mexican government,
along with the DEA,

is doing everything it can
to put him back behind bars.

[dramatic music]

- What Chapo decides to do
is go to somewhere

he feels he would be
sort of inconspicuous,

which is
a beach town of Mazatlán.

You know,
it's a vacation destination.

A lot of Americans
vacation there.

So, it didn't seem
like an obvious choice.

He didn't go to one
of his mountain warrens,

which would be
an obvious hiding place.

He went somewhere that was
completely out of the box.

♪ ♪

They tracked down Chapo
at Hotel Miramar,

which is a tourist hotel.

- I was in the front
of the hotel at the time,

and I heard,
"We've got the target.

We've got the target."
And I drove my vehicle

down into the underground
parking garage.

♪ ♪

And I ran right up to him
and just jumped in his face

and said, "What's up, Chapo?"

It was, like, the first thing
that came to me.

Was just kind of all
the excitement

just rushing out.
Couldn't believe it.

- When El Chapo returns
to prison,

the Mexican government
does not make the mistake

of returning him
to Puente Grande.

He's getting locked up here,

in Federal Social Readaptation
Center Number Uno,

AKA Altiplano.

Altiplano is
the most secure prison

in all of Mexico,

and one of the toughest
maximum-security prisons

in the world.

Not only is it a no-fly zone,
its walls are thick enough

to resist a full-scale
military assault,

cell phones don't work
anywhere in the prison,

and most important of all,
in here,

El Chapo
is no longer being watched

by guards his cartel
can control.

Altiplano is considered
impossible to escape.

But with U.S. extradition
hanging over his head,

El Chapo wastes no time
coming up with a plan

to be the first person

to break out
of this formidable fortress.

- The only way that Guzmán,

once he was in prison
at Altiplano,

was able to communicate
with the outside world

was through people who were
permitted to visit him there.

And those people were
essentially his lawyer,

Oscar Lopez, and his third
and much younger wife.

- He coordinated with his wife,

Emma Coronel, with his sons,

who are known by the nickname
Los Chapitos,

that he wanted
to put a plan into action.

And so immediately, they began
paying the appropriate bribes,

getting the personnel lined up

who are necessary
to implement such a plan.

- One key player is
a familiar face

from El Chapo's
previous jailbreak.

- After Guzmán's first escape
from Puente Grande,

Dámaso López
was essentially blamed for it,

and he was unemployable.
He lost his job.

He had nowhere to go,
and ended taking a job

with Guzmán
and the Sinaloa Cartel.

He rose in the ranks,
and by the time

that Guzmán was in prison
a second time,

at Altiplano, Dámaso López

was more or less
Guzmán's Chief of Staff.

He was his true right-hand man,

and really the guy
who was running much

of Guzmán's operations
while Guzmán was in prison.

- Even with all these people
doing this bidding,

El Chapo's escape is far
from a sure thing.

He's confined to this cell
23 hours a day,

not allowed to take part
in any prison sports

or activities,

and he can only have
court-approved visitors.

A GPS monitor is permanently
strapped around his ankle.

El Chapo knows he won't be able
to roll out of the front door

like he did at Puente Grande.

Even worse, he's under
constant video surveillance...

♪ ♪

By two Mexican national
intelligence officers.

El Chapo has finally
met his match.

♪ ♪

Or has he?

♪ ♪

- This being El Chapo, a tunnel

has to be part of the plan.

But where are you
going to tunnel from?

- The plan was to first
acquire a piece of property

that was close enough
to Altiplano

that it would enable
the construction of a tunnel

into the prison,
but not too close

so as to attract the attention
of any authorities.

So there was first a search team

that was essentially
a real estate team

that went out looking
for such a property.

Altiplano stood on its own
in essentially the midst

of a vast agricultural region
and was just a huge complex

that emerged from
this vast Mexican flatland.

There was virtually
nothing around it,

minus a few small smatterings

of villages.

Within about a mile

of the prisons gates

was a vacant industrial site

that perhaps had been used

by some of the local farmers

at one point.

Once the property was acquired,

the engineering question

of how to build
this tunnel was breached.

♪ ♪

- El Chapo's men are facing

their most difficult
engineering task ever:

how do you break into
a maximum-security prison?

The walls are impenetrable,
the guards are heavily armed,

and the closed-circuit TV camera

can see every inch
of El Chapo's cell.

Well, almost every inch.

The shower drain is obscured
by this half-wall.

The only way to get in unnoticed

is to dig a tunnel
that opens up right here.

♪ ♪

- The foremost challenge

that the escape crew had to face

was how do we dig underground
for what was essentially

a mile, sightless, beneath
the surface of the earth,

scratching away
at rock and dirt,

to get directly to the target?

- A one-mile tunnel,
with the aim of it

coming up directly in
El Chapo's shower stall.

How is it that they would know

exactly where
his shower drain was?

- Without some way to locate
the shower stall,

El Chapo's team is searching
for a needle in a haystack.

What he's asking
for borders on impossible.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

- Drug lord Joaquín
"El Chapo" Guzmán is locked up

in a fortress--Altiplano
maximum-security prison.

But he has a plan to escape.

A mile from here,
outside the prison walls,

his men are attempting to dig
an underground passageway

that leads to this exact spot.

If their angle of measurement
is off by a single degree,

they'll miss the target
by 92 feet.

Somehow, they need to make sure

they get from there
to here, exactly.

♪ ♪

- Once you enter the warehouse,

you see what looks
like a sand floor.

And so, you descend
into a chamber

that's supporting the sand floor

with cinder blocks on the sides

and a wooden ceiling.

From there,
you descend a further 30 feet

to the actual tunnel.
It's almost inconceivable

that something like this
could take place.

This isn't tunneling
below a wall

and emerging on the other side
and making a break for it.

This is a feat of coordination,

structural engineering,

planning, and bribery,
the likes of which

we haven't seen in the history
of great escapes.

How would you be able

to pinpoint with such precision

a 3x2-foot hole in the ground
to know where to come up?

[suspenseful music]

- In January 2015, El Chapo
comes up with a cunning plan

to help his men find his cell.

- The idea was,
they were going to smuggle

into the prison a GPS device,

so that Chapo could turn it on

and the people building
this tunnel would know exactly

where the other end
of the tunnel needed to be.

- At Altiplano,
smuggling anything

is next to impossible.

♪ ♪

- When you get into the prison,

there's roughly half a dozen,

perhaps more checkpoints
you have to go through.

You can't bring anything
in that could potentially

be used as a weapon
or as a tool to escape.

- El Chapo would have
to risk it.

There was no other way
to move forward with the plan.

So he enlisted the help
of the people he trusted most.

- Chapo's family members
smuggled a watch to him

that had a GPS locator on it.

- And the digging crew was
able to follow the signal

that that watch emitted
even underground,

digging day after day,

night after night,

to reach that signal.

- His GPS watch lets
El Chapo's men know

that their aim is true.

But down here in the tunnel,

there are other challenges
to overcome.

- You need air down there
to breathe,

or else you will asphyxiate.

You're talking about
a digging crew

of 10 to 12 guys

working in this thing.

So they had to blow air
into it and ventilate

in order to survive.

- They wind up lining the tunnel

with thousands of feet
of PVC pipe,

and they have a compressor
putting forced air

through the tunnel so people
could breathe inside.

They also needed to outfit it
with lights,

so that it wasn't
completely dark.

To do that,
you needed to have a generator.

So they hide a generator
in the building

on the land
that they've purchased,

and they hide that generator

by making it look
like a barbecue pit.

- It's a massive undertaking.

♪ ♪

- The scale of the endeavor
boggles the mind--5,000 feet

of PVC piping for ventilation,

thousands of fluorescent
light bulbs,

moving over hundreds
of thousands

of pounds of dirt,

and not be detected.

- It was laid with
a makeshift railroad track,

atop which sat a kind
of modified mining cart,

which had been outfitted

with the stripped-down frame
of a motorcycle.

- Chapo was very impatient.

We now know
that he was writing letters,

saying,
"Why is it taking so long?"

And he was being told,
"Compadre,

this is not an easy job.
We've got to get this right."

But he was eager to get out
of there as soon as possible.

♪ ♪

- El Chapo gets the word

that the tunnel is almost ready,

and he gives word back
about a special date

he wants the escape
to happen on.

- Guzmán's plan was to have
his escape from Altiplano

fall on Saturday, July 4th.
It was a Saturday that year.

That was an important fact,
because on weekends,

Altiplano's prison staff
was low.

And he chose July 4th
because he wanted to embarrass

the American government--that
he could break out of prison

on America's greatest
national holiday.

It didn't quite work that way.

They couldn't pull it off
by Saturday, July 4th,

and so they had
to delay one week.

♪ ♪

- El Chapo isn't able to give
the U.S. authorities

the 4th of July fireworks
show he was hoping for.

But his own independence day
is coming soon.

On Saturday, July 11, 2015,

his team will attempt
to break through

and whisk him away to freedom.

♪ ♪

[tense music]

- After almost a year
of waiting,

the big night for
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán

is finally here.

He will be attempting to break
out of Altiplano prison.

- A video exists of Guzmán
on the night of the escape,

taken by prison authorities.

And you can see him in his cell,

lounging on his bed,
listening to what seems to be

a television comedy show
in a digital tablet.

You can literally here
the laughter

and applause
as he sits there waiting.

Every once in a while,
he gets up,

he kind of paces
around the room,

he sits back down,
listens to his comedy show.

- You can hear,
in the background,

you know,
really loud television,

which you can tell is trying
to cover up this banging

and clanging sound
of the workers

digging up the floor
of his cell.

[banging]

♪ ♪

- It's at that point

that Guzmán sits
on the edge of his bed,

puts on his shoes, gets up,

and walks into the shower cell,

the only place
in the entire cell

that is obscured from view
by a video camera

because obviously,
they gave him some semblance

of privacy while he was bathing.

- You can see him pacing back
and forth in the cell,

and then all of a sudden
walking into the shower,

and then he's gone.

♪ ♪

- Guzmán goes into a hole
that has been punctured

in the bottom of his shower cell

by the conspirators underground.

He climbs down a makeshift
ladder 15 to 20 feet.

He is met by his wife's brother.

Guzmán is said to have climbed
on the motorcycle.

It kicks into life.

It spirits him away
a mile forward

to the exit of the tunnel.

He is taken up a ladder
on the safe side.

- When he gets to
the cinder block house,

there's an ATV waiting
to speed him away quickly

from the scene of the crime.

- It takes almost 40 minutes
before the guards realize

that he's gone
and go into his cell.

- Cell number 20 sits empty

as a shocked security officer
radios in to his commander.

[alarms blare]

The alarms goes off
at Altiplano.

But it's too late.

El Chapo is on the move,
with a serious head start.

- He is driven through the night

to a waiting semi,

18-wheel truck.

♪ ♪

The truck drives him two hours
from the town of Toluca,

where Altiplano prison is,
to a much smaller town,

San Juan, Queretaro,

where he is placed aboard
a small private plane

flown by one of his most
trusted and favorite pilots.

- Shouldn't surprise us
that El Chapo, by this point,

is taking
every precaution possible,

including making sure
that there's not one

but two planes ready
to spirit him away to safety,

one as a decoy,

and one that will actually
carry him to freedom.

♪ ♪

- And his plane spirits him away

from the Mexican flatlands

back to his home base
in the Sinaloa mountains,

to his sort of most secure
private hideaway,

known as the Sky.

- Watching the video,
it's just incredible

the amount of noise
that was happening,

the amount of drilling and
banging that could be heard.

And nobody raised a head.
Nobody lifted a finger.

Nobody questioned
as to why that was happening.

So it's pretty remarkable,
but, really,

expected at this point in time.

He escaped Puente Grande
in 2001.

He escaped law enforcement
for 13 years.

He escaped us
during our operation,

out of his safe house.

And now you put him
in a maximum-security prison

in Mexico, and you think
that he's going to be secure?

I don't think so.

I think
it was probably inevitable.

I had some initial shock
when he broke out.

But went right back
into "let's go get this guy.

"He's done this before to us.

Let's mount up the team
and get after him."

- Following this escape,
El Chapo attempts to resume

his regular activities,
but now it's not as easy.

This escape is
a significant embarrassment

to the Mexican government,
who had, only a year before,

trumpeted his capture
as a major accomplishment

in the nation's war
on drugs and crime.

That only adds fuel to the fire

to try to see him
apprehended once again.

- There doesn't seem to be
a prison in Mexico

that can hold El Chapo for good.

Once again, he has escaped.

And now, for the third time,
the chase is on.

♪ ♪

- It's 2015.

El Chapo leaves
Mexican authorities in shock

by escaping
through a mile-long tunnel

under Altiplano prison.

Embarrassed by their inability
to keep El Chapo

under lock and key,

the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency

and the Mexican Marines

are more determined
than ever to bring him

to justice on U.S. soil.

- For days now, we have been
trying to gain entry

into that home where El Chapo
is said to have emerged.

We finally...
I had, at the time,

a very high-level source
in the Mexican government

who gave me the initial heads
up that he had escaped.

When I got down to the tunnel,
the first thing I noticed

was a discarded Coca-Cola can,
and it made it so humanizing.

Like, the men that had been
working to build this

were drinking Coca-Colas
and tossing their trash aside.

It was like being
in this live-action museum.

There was this
overwhelming odor of gasoline,

and the motorcycle
still had a half

a tank of gasoline in it,

so it was just like El Chapo
had just been here,

and it gives me
goosebumps to think,

just a few days before,

the most notorious
drug trafficker in the world

was standing right
where I was standing.

♪ ♪

- After Guzmán's escape
from Altiplano,

the U.S.
law enforcement agents

and the Mexican Marines,

who had spent all of that time
and energy

to put him into Altiplano
in the first place,

were devastated.

- My initial reaction was shock,

but I was too far gone
at this point.

We all were, really.

But thankfully,
the Mexican Marines

had our blueprint
of intelligence,

and picked that back up
and got back after it.

And it didn't take them long
to track him down,

because he really
had nowhere to go.

[suspenseful music]

- The Mexican government
availed itself

of a very sophisticated
Israeli technology

called Pegasus,

this super-secret
surveillance technology

that essentially uses

what are known as Trojan horses

to enter the target of
an investigation's cell phone.

Operation: Black Swan
was the Mexican Marine

and Mexican
intelligence operation

that made Guzmán
its high-priority target

once he escaped.

- He's still feared.

He carries
this mysticism to him,

almost this legendary status,

because for so many years,
he was in hiding.

Everyone knew that this was
the man that was responsible

for the violence in Mexico.
But no one knew where he was.

No one seemed to know
how to catch up to him.

And that made him
an even more legendary figure.

- He escaped on July 11, 2015,

and then he's recaptured again
on January 8, 2016.

♪ ♪

- He winds up getting taken
right back

to the same Altiplano prison
that he just escaped from.

- Chapo was not deterred
by being

re-recaptured, as we called it.

He was gonna try
to escape again.

- He hasn't given up at all.

Nunez testifies
that the very next month,

after he's recaptured,

Chapo's family reaches
back out to him and says,

"We gotta give
this another go."

He receives another $100,000
as a down payment

to buy yet another property.

The idea was, they were gonna
do it all over again.

A few months later,
the Mexican authorities

wind up moving Chapo
from Altiplano prison

to a prison right across
the Rio Grande

from El Paso, Texas,

and there he stays
until January 19, 2017,

when he's brought
to the United States.

[camera shutters clicking]

[reporters whistle, shout]

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Given his history of escapes,

I wasn't entirely sure
that he would make it

until he actually landed
in New York City

and I was there
in the courtroom with him.

And even then,
there were moments.

We were all in court one day,

and all of a sudden,
with no warning,

the power to the courthouse
cuts out,

and we're all
sitting in darkness.

Someone in the gallery yells,
"He's gone!"

And I have to say,
for a fraction of a second,

I wondered if Chapo
had pulled off

probably the most elaborate
escape possible.

But then the power
comes back on,

and Chapo's sitting right there

at counsel's table, smiling.

- In the end, El Chapo is not
able to escape U.S. justice.

- Chapo Guzmán was convicted
on all counts,

and ultimately he was sentenced
to life plus 30 years,

and he's now residing
in Florence, Colorado,

in the supermax prison.

- Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán
is an evil genius.

He ran the biggest
drug cartel in the world,

made billions of dollars,

and organized massive
clandestine operations

to build tunnels, like this one.

His biggest fear--
Landing in U.S. custody.

But today, that's exactly
where he is.

A supermax prison in Colorado

nicknamed the Alcatraz
of the Rockies.

He spends his days
in solitary confinement

and has almost no contact
with the outside world.

Authorities believe
they finally found a prison

he cannot escape.

But with someone like El Chapo,

it's important
to never say "never."