Chris Feistl & Dave Mitchell (former DEA agents)

23:52Kelly Cartel didn't do that. Kelly Cartel was supporting the Peppys to go after the Medellin. So if you're there and you know, okay, there's a demand for cocaine in the United States, so there's going to be somebody serving it. So wouldn't you rather have Kelly Cartel who's not putting bombs anywhere? Of course. So that's why they kind of had the will of the people. Those were the choices they had. This is probably a question for the end, but we're kind of here, which is another fascination I think people innately have. Certainly mine is like, why don't they quit? That's a very good point. Could he have stopped being the eighth richest man in the world and let all the problems go away?

24:29Or these guys could have just pulled up stakes and been like, okay, great. We did it. We got our billions. We're out. And none of them can do it. Yeah. It's not about the money at that point. It's about money. It's about power. It's about control. But then also, once you're in that far, you can't get out. How do you get out? Because if you try to get out, what happens is, and you see this a lot in the organized crime and in the mafia, If you try to get out, they think that you're going to turn informant and you're going to rat people out. And the minute that you try to get out, that's when they kill you because they're worried about everything that you know.

24:59They can't risk it. You're a liability. Which then becomes a great tool for you guys. That's right. That's exactly right. It's a blessing that they won't let these guys retire. If they had just let these guys retire, you guys would probably have a lot less to work with. You never see anybody really retire. Yeah, you retire in the ground. That's how you retire. Okay, so you guys land in Columbia and you go to Cali, the city. And how do you design your approach? Where does one start trying to cut off the head of the serpent? We really started from crawling to walking to running. When we were told, hey, you guys are going to be working Cali, we couldn't leave the embassy to go to Cali.

25:36They said, no one's allowed to Cali. It's too dangerous. So eventually we were allowed to go to Cali only for a day. And I said, you have to be back. Here's the outline. So we roll into Columbia. At that time, Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world. It's led the world in homicides. It's led the world in kidnappings. Car bombs were going off all over the city until Pablo died. So we walk into that. We try to go to Cali. As Dave said, they won't let us go. It's too dangerous. Two agents who were working there previously had their photos taken. The photo came back to the embassy and it was perceived as a threat.

26:06You guys can't go. They were Hispanic agents that fit in. And they still caught them. Cali, zero American presence. Who do they send to Cali? The whitest two guys they could find. Me and Dave. The whitest and the biggest, right? Because we're both the good 6 '2", 6 '3". Dave looks like he could play tight end for, you know. That was the environment that we were walking into. And we were extremely security conscious. We were always worried about our safety. We all knew the story about Kiki Camarena, what happened to him in Mexico. He was kidnapped and killed by the cartel. He was a DEA agent. He's portrayed in season one of Narcos Mexico.

26:42So that's always on the back of your mind. We're operating in this very inhospitable, hot environment, which was Cali. And you're not going to be able to do anything covertly. Everyone knows you guys are DEA. I think that's important. We were embedded with the police and the military. So we actually lived with them on their base. So when we first got there, we started staying with the military. Then the colonel said, hey, you guys are DEA. I'm going to bring my friend down. He's with the Columbia National Police. So we met him. So then we would start staying at the police base, even though we were told they have more Cali snitches in there, infiltrators than Swiss chiefs.

27:24Right. Yes, that's exactly what I want you guys to talk about, which is I want to know how the fuck you even evaluate who's helping you there. Because as you say in the book, the place is almost universally corrupt at that point. They got a president elected. That's right. How on earth do you know when you're talking to the friendlies who you can share information with, who you can actually trust? How do you sniff that out? Well, you don't know who the friendly is. So when we were working at the police base, you can kind of stand off in what I would do and Chris would do. All right, if I was a bad guy, who would I go after?

27:55Who has all the information? And unfortunately, it was one of the liaison captains that was assigned to us. He was their top source. But we had to operate. We get criticized for this, but it was the only way that we could protect ourselves as well as our sources and methods and our assets that we were using is we had to operate under the assumption that everyone was corrupt. Right. And we knew that that wasn't the case. But in order to do what we had to do, we had to operate because we could not take that chance. Why do you get criticized for that? That's just smart. Because they say, well, you can't lump everybody into that category as being corrupt.

28:28You're going to assume some very innocent people are guilty. We knew that. And look, Columbia sacrificed more than any other country on earth in terrorism. Because of our fucking consumption, by the way. That's right. And the narco trafficking. And there were a lot of, just for the record, a lot of hardworking and honest Colombian men and women who went out there every day to try to do the right thing, right? A lot of them lost their lives doing it. Even up to today. Thousands of officers. To be safe, though, we had to operate under that assumption that everyone was corrupt. So we only shared part of the information that we had.

28:55If it came from A, we told them it came from B. But how do you even orchestrate any kind of action? because you're going to need them and you're going to be immediately telling them what you're going to do. How did you navigate that? And that's how we learned to navigate that system because raid after raid after raid that we did, we found that it was compromised, right? And we knew like, hey, this was really good information. Something's wrong. Some of the stuff, too, it was like you'd see in the movies. We'd come in and there'd be half a cup of coffee there and it'd still be hot, but there'd be nobody in the apartment, right?

29:26Or there'd be some toast there, half eaten, and you'd be like, somebody was just here and they just left. Still still in the bathtub. Like Miguel had a problem with his low sugar level. So he had a lot of fruit or something. So we'll see all kinds of fruit, that type of diet he was eating. Oh, my God. And, you know, he always had, we call it a switching station, 25 lines. So if somebody picked up the phone, they wouldn't know it's going to that part. You know, they would do a raid over here. So we knew the info was good. But everyone you're dealing with, from the military to the police, they are all expressing the goal to bring down the Cali cartel.

29:59Yes. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

30:14Okay, so work me up to, I guess, the breakthrough for you guys, and maybe there's one before that, but I'm thinking the breakthrough is getting in touch with Salcedo? Salcedo. Other things that occurred. Get us up to that point. Okay, so the real break comes in June of 1995. So by this time, Dave and I are on the ground almost one year. Can we add one thing? I forgot one thing. Yes, sir. The Cali cartel has an edict. Do not kill the DEA agents. Oh, really? That's what we thought. That's what we hoped. Yeah. Which obviously was the case because you guys could have been killed on day two. Absolutely.

30:47So you have to reverse engineer that that is. That's why you got to respect them. What's their reasoning for that? Well, they saw what happened when the agent Kiki Camarena was kidnapped and killed in Mexico. and they saw the response, not only from the U.S. government, but from the Mexico government. They shut the border down and they did not rest until every one of those guys, as best they could, was brought to justice. You're picking a fight you don't want. Yeah, that makes sense. They didn't want the heat. Plus, they saw what happened in Panama with Noriega. The U.S. invaded the country to go after Noriega.

31:13So they were concerned. The Kelly cartel was always concerned of military action. Whether or not that would have ever came about, they were concerned about that. So that was always in the back of their minds. Don't harm the DEA guys because we don't want that added heat. Don't link the tiger up. I thought the 82nd Airborne would fly into Cali. That's because of Dave. I'll pretend I'm at all the time. If we get hurt, 82nd Airborne's standing by. But there were three keys to us being successful going after the cartel leaders. And again, this was after a year on the ground. Failure after failure after failure.

31:44Compromise after compromise. Corruption, systemic throughout the service. Yeah, how you guys stayed optimistic, I don't know. That was our job. We had to keep pushing forward. But there were three things. One was the use of these special polygraphed and trained units that were in Bogota, in Colombia, that were trained by the intelligence community. And I think we all know who we're talking about when we talk about the intelligence community, the CIA. Yes. We started to use these specialized groups. And that would be to deal with your counterparts in the military? And the corruption. Yeah. So they would come from Bogota.

32:16They weren't stationed in Cali. They would come over land in Bogota so nobody knew that they were there. The second one was the recruitment of assets that we had. Salcedo was one of them. But before that, we recruited two other assets. How do you get in that door? It's complicated. There's a couple of different ways. Salcedo is a long story and we can get to that. But we're able to recruit these two assets that provide us with really good intelligence about where Gilberto Rodriguez is. And we're able to surveil one of his executive secretaries back to where Gilberto is. Because you need to get one of these four heads involved in some criminal activity when you approach them, right?

32:48Well, they're already wanted in Columbia for drug trafficking. Oh, they are. Money laundering. Oh, so they're already, the charges are already there. So it's really just finding them. That's right. Manhunt. This is terrorism. This is 100 % the same thing. Finding Osama. Yeah. Yeah, it's exactly what it is. It's a manhunt. And then the third key thing was Dave and I being able to work unilaterally. Because of the systemic corruption, we started to do everything unilaterally. And what does that mean? We were operating on our own, independently from the Colombian units. We were living in safe houses away from the base because it was infiltrated.

33:20We were debriefing our own assets throughout the city at nighttime. We are doing our own surveillances. We are doing our own reconnaissance. You said the daytime was just a fake. Like all day you were with the government people and your real job happened at night. That's right. There's one thing, even though we're working unilateral, doing surveillance, doing interviews at night, debriefing, we don't have arrest powers. And in the States, we have arrest powers. So what our goal is to come up with intelligence information and have a package. And figure out who the right official is to give it to.

33:50We want to use these better teams. Which were the teams that we used from both sides. So this is Kafkaesque. It's very complicated. Kafkaesque. So listen to our instructions when we go back to our first trip to Cali. So they say, okay, you and Dave can go to Cali, but there's three rules you have to abide by. And this was the first trip. One is you had to be back by nightfall. You couldn't stay overnight. The second was we could never leave the police or military base without a police or military escort. And the third thing was, because you know the reputation that DEA has, no cowboy shit, right?

34:21No unilateral activity. So what did we do? We violated those rules on a daily basis because that was what we had to do to get the job done. Yes. I imagine grooming an asset would be so hard because, again, everyone in town knows your DEA. That's right. Anybody you approach is like, well, the DEA wants to talk to me. You know, we were followed. And not to cause harm on us per se, but they wanted to see if we were meeting anyone. And that might be a source. And then they'll go after that person. Well, you were being followed by police officers. You were being followed by taxi cab drivers. A couple of guys on a motorcycle, you know who they are.

34:55And that's what made meeting these assets super difficult because we had to do it at night, right? We couldn't do it during the day because we would stand out like a bunch of sore thumbs, right? And they always told us at the embassy, you guys don't blend in. Because I used to have real long hair. Before I went to boil, I had it down to the middle of my back. I looked like an extra out of Point Break with Nick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. But we would have to do that at night, not only for our safety, but for the assets safety too, right? Because we didn't want them to be exposed. Where are you meeting them at night?

35:23Like in the woods? Cane fields, construction areas. Even logistically getting to them, we need to meet here feels hard. Well, we had a whole process of communication. We would communicate by beepers. We would send coded messages. If I put in 555-1212 to call me at that number, we had a prearranged plan where we would subtract one number from each digit. So it would be like 444. If anybody intercepted the number, they wouldn't know what they were looking at. And also keep in mind that our main source, Jorge Saucedo, he was the main security guard for the Cali cartel for Miguel Rodriguez. He is high up.

36:01How do you meet him? He would tell us where to meet him because he would put security forces somewhere else. You'll say, hey, meet me and see out the cane field because I don't have anybody there. Or you guys can drive by this location and check it out. I'll pull my forces out and I'll give you a 15-minute window, but only 15 minutes. He had control of all the eyes and ears, luckily. He might have been the only person that could have come and worked with you in a way. Right, so he knew where everybody was at, where the security, where the patrols were. But we came into contact with him because he had a long past in the cartel.

36:34So he gets recruited into the cartel because he has contacts with these British mercenaries because he was a captain in the Army Reserves. And while he was in the Army Reserves, they did an operation against the FARC, which was a left wing Marxist Leninist guerrilla group that was fighting against the government. So the Cali cartel leaders asked him to bring in these mercenaries. It's right out of a movie. these mercenaries into Colombia to launch a helicopter assault operation against Pablo Escobar at his finca where the zoo was, Hacienda Napoli. So they bring these guys in, they train for a couple months, they launch this operation because they know Pablo's throwing a party for his soccer team.

37:12And these two helicopters go over to Hacienda Napoli, but on the way they hit bad weather. One helicopter crashes. It's like Black Hawk Down. A couple of the pilots killed. So So Salcedo is recruited for that mission to kill Pablo Escobar because of his contacts. But as time goes on, right, he starts to see what's going on. He sees the murders. He sees the bribery. He sees the corruption. Well, he can't leave. He can't get out. Right. So that's the point. We're going to say, guys, I don't want to do this. Yeah, I'll be killed immediately. When he got into the cartel with Cali, the agreement was that after Pablo was dead, he goes, I will help you kill Pablo because he's an enemy of the state.

37:48He's a terrorist. The world's a better place without him. under one condition that once Pablo is dead, I'm allowed to go back to my civilian life. He was an engineer. Oh, man. So, of course, what happens? Escobar is killed. Señor Miguel, Pablo is dead. My work here is done. Yeah, right. I'm going back to private life. No, you're not. Oh, fuck. That's so mean. Plus, he went over to El Salvador to pick up four bombs, and they wanted to get a particular plane. This is when Pablo was in prison. They want to fly over, drop these bombs on his prison. So this is the sequel to the helicopter movie part, right?

38:23Ill-fated helicopter. So he realizes that his only way out of the cartel is either he's going to get arrested or he's going to get killed. But does he find you or do you find him? It's kind of both. One of his associates gets, not associates, a contact. He was an attorney in the United States who used to come down to do legal affairs for the Cali cartel. And they struck up a friendship. and Salcedo would act as a translator for these American attorneys that would come down because they didn't speak Spanish. And he struck up a friendship with him. This attorney ends up getting indicted in an Operation Cornerstone case with 59 other people.

38:56And Salcedo starts to think, hey, this might be a way for me to maybe get out because otherwise I'm going to be dead. So he sends him a message basically saying like, hey, I think we might be able to help each other. I'll help you. Maybe you get your sentence reduced. You help me. He says that to the lawyer? Yeah, kind of hooked me up with somebody in the government. We're maybe... A discreet telephone call. Maybe we can do something. How much money does he have, Jorge? Is he loaded? No. We asked him that question when we first met him. Because your bosses have hundreds of fucking millions of dollars a month.

39:25So in our first meeting, just to jump ahead, we asked him that. Like, hey, how much money do you get paid by Miguel Rodriguez, who's the head of security for the Cali Cartel? And he didn't even blink an eye. He said, I make$1 ,000 a month and get a take-home car. Oh, that's so dumb of them. You'd think you'd want that person. They're really frugal. While hundreds of millions are rotting in a hole that they've forgotten about. It's like this dichotomy of frugality and total waste. You need to keep that person happy. That's crazy. It's like great psychology that emerges when people find themselves in this situation with too much money, too much power.

39:58Like all these other things that get predictable. And in the book, we outline our first meeting with Salcedo and everything that happens after that point. It's very well detailed. It's very well documented because they've kept an incredible journal of when we were there. And I would always tell him, dude, what are you doing? Right now? So every day he would cover you, Dave. We did this. We did that. I didn't cover myself. Because people say, you didn't do it. Where were you? And we said, on this day, we were here. On this day, we did this. So we were able to fill in with a lot of details about meetings like this.

40:27He called for a meeting in a sugar cane field. And you guys had to go there a few hours ahead of time and scope it. And then act like you've arrived. That first meeting must have been. We're in the car. And Chris is talking to him. he has an intercom. He goes, let's meet at CIOT. CIOT is an agriculture location. And that's where the cane field is. I looked at Chris. I said, Chris, we can't go to CIOT. First of all, we have no protection. They could have anybody there to kill us. Are you even allowed to carry guns while you're there? We were carrying guns. We're allowed to carry guns. But remember, we're not supposed to leave the police base.

41:00So we're running around doing all those activities. So here's the head of security for the Cali cartel. First, he tells me, let's meet at CIOT, but come alone. I'm like, I'm not coming alone. Are you crazy? I have to come with my partner. And then finally he says, you can come with your partner. And then he says, no Colombians, right? Because he was one of the guys that was paying off a lot of the Colombians. So he knew about the corruption. Because if I see anybody who's even looks Colombian, the deal is off. Even if they brought you, Monica, you might have stood too brown. So we're sitting there thinking like, head of security, the Cali Hotel wants to meet us an hour outside of Cali, telling me to come alone and not to bring any Colombians.

41:37And we're thinking like, dude, this could be a trap. This could be an ambush. We weren't sure what to expect. We're not even supposed to leave the base. And then here we are going to go meet this counterintelligence officer in the middle of a cane field an hour outside of Cali. So it was pretty hairy. I think we outlined that pretty well in the book, how we felt, because honestly, we were pretty scared. It's funny when we're there. Everything's funny now. At the time, it wasn't. But I looked at Chris. I said, Chris, have you ever seen that movie Onion Fields? This could be our Onion Field. Why?

42:05How did I have it? Well, that actually happened in California. Oh, what happened? That's where some police officers were killed in the Onion Field. And they made a movie about it. Okay, so you meet with him. And do you like him? He's not at all what we thought. Just to backtrack a little bit, he says, meet us at the cane field at 3 o 'clock. Right? We get out there at 12. Because we're terrified it's going to be an ambush or they're going to set us up and try to kill us or kidnap us or whatever. So we're out there in this blistering heat, like sitting around for three hours waiting. But we had a good vantage point.

42:35So at least we can see everything coming for a while. So if anybody came in and we were prepared and we were pretty heavily armed, like I say, we looked like Neo and Trinity when they went into the government-controlled building to get Morpheus. We were loaded. But as we were there, nobody came. Maybe this guy's for real. Yeah. And I think we all have preconceived notions. We're thinking, head of security for the Cali cartel, it's going to be like a really bad guy. Something out of the movies. Exactly. He's going to look a certain way. He's going to talk a certain way. And when we saw him, he was the exact opposite of what we thought.

43:07Came alone. He wasn't armed. We made sure Davey patted him down. We checked the car. We were still wary for a trap. And he said our names first. We went to introduce ourselves. Yeah, he knew who we were. They knew everything about us. They had nicknames for us. We were called Los Monos. What is Los Monos? Los Monos is a monkey. But what they would use it for is if somebody is air-conflicted, like the gringos, where the gringos. The gringos that spawned, they would call them Los Monos. Oh, that's interesting. that's almost a universal racial slur. Yeah, for real. There's something comforting about that.

43:42That was what the cartel called us. They referred to us as the monos. But he talked real softly, like with a very low voice. An imposing man, or was he just a normal? No, he was just very normal looking. The clothes that he wore, the way he walked, like not trying to make a sound or an impression. So I look at Dave like, man, this guy is like the exact opposite of everything that we thought. And then, of course, the first thing he says to us is like, hey, this is going to be a one-time meeting and it's going to be real quick because I got to get back to Cali because I'm on standby for Miguel, the head of the cartel.

44:11But as we started to talk and go over things, we ended up being out there three hours that first meeting until it got dark. Was your mind being blown? Were you learning things that were unimaginable? It's like you open up the book. We learned more in those three hours than... The whole year on the ground. Wow. Absolutely. Can you remember one of the most shocking things you heard during that? There's one thing I looked at him. I said, hey, I just need to know, is DEA a threat. He looked at me just like a father would and says, you and Chris, you work very hard. Oh, so patronizing. No, you guys are hard workers.

44:44But no, he is not a threat. And this is why. You and Chris can go out, talk to anybody you want to gather information intelligence. But at the end of the day, you don't have arrest powers. You have to deal with the Columbians. And that's where we got you. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it all unravels a second. You got to get official. And by that point, we were very well aware of the systemic corruption that existed within not only the security forces, but in the government. But just talking to him and how plainly and how simply he would just put out there, oh, yeah, well, you can't deal with this person because he's corrupt and the cartel is paying that guy and we paid this guy.

45:24It was overwhelming the amount of corruption that we were dealing with. Did you ask why should we trust you? We did. We talked all about that. But then when we started to hear his story, how he got involved in the cartel and that he couldn't get out. I'd have such a hard time believing it. Really, you don't have a choice. I guess you're right. You don't have a choice. And then also, I think you'd be reasonable to conclude it's not worth them fucking with us. As he said, they're not a threat. They don't have to be appeased. They could be ignored. So why do this? They already know where you're at.

45:54I would trust it because there's almost no incentive for them to be keeping an eye on you. They're already doing that. And at that point, we were pretty well versed on the cartel and what they were doing. But talking to him, it just took us to a whole nother level. But we would ask a lot of questions that we knew the answers to, just trying to vet him. He was basically doing the same thing to us. Like, hey, you guys are kids. You know, we were 30 years old at the time. You know, he's like, you guys are here trying to bring down the head of the Cali cartel. Look at you guys. So he was like, how can I trust you?

46:21How do I know that you guys are going to be able to handle it? Right? Yeah. Then he asked this, he goes, listen, it's not only my life, but my family's life. So it's my family's life is in your hands. Can I trust you? Well, what's funny is you already answered a question inadvertently earlier, which is my first thought when I thought of Jorge joining Witness Protection, which he has now done here in America, I thought, what a demotion in his lifestyle. But now that I know he made a thousand bucks a month, not a demotion. I'm him and I'm high on the hog and I got to consider moving to St. Louis and living in a track home.

46:53You were worried about your life, your living in fear. Trusting him initially was difficult. But as we started to talk and we got more into details, like I said, and we were asking questions that we knew the answers to. And he was being honest and upfront and forthright. Plus, we were there three hours with that. We think this guy is above board. But that still doesn't mean that we didn't take precautions every time. So we met him numerous, numerous times after that one, one time. Okay. Now, what is mind-blowing is you guys do find out where Miguel is, and you raid his place, and you don't find him.

47:27Is that correct? The first raid, he's in a wall? Yeah, there was actually two raids even before that. Oh. Without Jorge. Without Jorge. But the one where he's behind the wall, that was with Jorge. Okay. So, the first big solid tip with this new ass set. I'm scared for Jorge during all of this. Are you guys present for that? We're there. Anybody who's seen Narcos season three, it focuses on the Cali cartel. This scene is very well done by Netflix and it's very well outlined in the show. To make a long story short, we're in this apartment looking for Miguel Rodriguez, the time now, the head of the Cali cartel.

47:59How nice of an apartment. This one was very modest. Here's the other thing when you learn more about these things. It's such a dream to live this way. And then you find out half the time these people are running through tunnels and they're in shitty apartments. They can't enjoy any of it. At that point, they were on the run and they were hiding. You go back years before, they were living in the big walled houses, the Miami Vice-style homes with the pools. But now they were continually moving because we're hot on their trail. We're raiding place after place after place. And while we're in the apartment, we're in contact with Salcedo.

48:30And he keeps relaying information to us because he's at another meeting with other cartel members where he's getting this real-time intelligence and he's forwarding it to us. Yeah. So the first thing he tells us is that he's there. He's in a coleta. It's a secret hiding spot. It's like you see in these old movies where you push the wall and it opens. Yeah. Highly sophisticated. Wow. So he tells us, is there a big red desk in the apartment? Because there's these really sensitive documents. So we're looking around for latches. We're pushing. We can't find shit. And then one of our partners who's there, Jerry Salome, he comes and he picks the desk up and he just turns it over and it smashes on the marble floor and it breaks open.

49:07And in the back of the desk is a hidden compartment in a desk. How do you do that? with three briefcases. And in these briefcases, check this out, this is staggering, are all these super sensitive files, corruption-related information, letters from the president's office about money that they had donated. And there was a list of 2 ,800 corrupt officials just in those briefcases. 2 ,800. Good luck finding the straight home. So we find that that buys us a little more time. Then he tells us, look, he's in this secret compartment in the bathroom. He's hiding. He's in the bathroom. He's there. He's been there for the last 12 hours.

49:47How was he telling you this? On the phone? Well, we were going outside, making phone calls. He was at a pay phone and we were at another phone about a hundred yards away. And we didn't even know, we didn't know we were that close. And then he would go back in and get more information to come out. As the head of security, he was able to get out and to relay, Hey, I got to go check on my guys are telling me this. So it didn't cause a lot of attention. So finally, there are like four bathrooms in the apartment and we're knocking on walls. We're thinking, how the hell can there be a hidden compartment in the bathroom?

50:18Finally, we take measurements of the apartments below and above. We're in the bathroom. We go, this bathroom is smaller. This is the only one that doesn't make sense. And we open the sink cabinet and it hits the toilet. We're going days and days with our limited sleep. We're not at our best. We're exhausted. Chris and I, we're in the restroom. You had the sink right here with the door right under it. And it doesn't open all the way. It hits the toilet. And we are so exhausted. We go, look at this. Who would make something like this? You're just kidding, man, of the construction. And then we realized, this is the carnetta.

50:49And then we saw a little yellow hose over it. This is it. And that's when we started doing drills. So you start drilling into the walls. And you break three drill bits. Right. You run out of drill bits. corrupt captain that was supposed to have been her liaison, who was the main source for him, he grabbed me by the arm. This guy was literally in a panic. And he goes, who's your source? Who's your source? How do you know this? How do you know this? Who's your source? I'm your business, bitch. I said, no, there's a space not accounted for. And then once we started drilling through the walls, he looked at their lawyers for the government and said, the Americans Prosecutors are doing unilateral action.

51:32So that's when they detained us. Some say maybe arrested us. They got everyone out of there. They had drilled holes right next to him. Imagine his experience in the wall. He's just standing there in the wall. Listening to you guys bitch about the construction quality. Just wondering, like, what are they going to get out of here? I mean, I can't imagine what his body was feeling like. Yeah, he was just, like, dodging. In there. And now drills are coming through. That's what I'm saying. Wow. The prosecutor is getting this information that the Americans are conducting a unilateral operation. He comes in, shuts the entire operation down.

52:06We're within a minute of accessing this compartment. This is no lie. You couldn't have drawn it up any better in a movie script if you tried. We were literally a minute away from grabbing this guy. And the prosecutor came in. He shut it down. He brought us out to the living room, took the keys, locked the keys to the door, put them in his pocket, typed up a formal complaint against us, and then escorted us and made us leave the apartment. Which is full corruption. Wow. And we said, can we leave? No. I said, so we're arrested. No, you're not arrested. You just can't leave. What new word are you going to say?

52:37So we left and jumped in. One of our friends, he worked for the intelligence community. He had a truck ready for us. But when we went to Bogota that night, we were out of the news. I mean, our names. And were they saying you guys had gone rogue? Yeah, yeah. They were saying that we conducted an operation. I thought, tomorrow I'm leaving Columbia. I'm going to be PMG'd. I'm out. We got our asses handed to us by the ambassador. You know, he said, like, I thought you guys weren't participating in operations. You weren't supposed to leave the base. You're conducting unilateral action. Remember the three things that we broke every day?

53:05We warned you about. Even though we were in a lot of trouble, the only thing we were worried about was Salcedo. He potentially blew his cover in that way. At that point, we thought they're going to kill him. Yeah. Because even if they don't know that he was responsible for that raid, he was one of the people that technically had access to information. I'm sure it's a narrow group that could have provided the info and they're gonna go through that list And they could just kill everybody and then we didn't hear from them for a couple days So so that was more sleep that we didn't get I mean we had lost 20 pounds by this point each because of the Stress and the crazy work hours that we were working in cowies.

53:41This is the end of the second act in a movie Yeah, you guys are ready to quit So how do you then go from that failed mission where you guys are accused of all these crimes against the state to? building another raid where you get him? So we're in Bogota. We're thinking, oh man, what's going on with our source? So we had a meeting and we said, listen, we haven't heard from this guy in about three days. Hey, we're going to have to go down to Cali, pretty much meet with the captain who's dirty. Couldn't really get bad. But fortunately, he gave us a call and says, hey, I'm still here. I'm going to send you some photos of the new location.

54:18So we got those photos and we're looking at it. And we said, okay, let's meet up. He said, okay, you guys come on down. And that's when we met him at Cane Field again. We always meet in the Cane Field, it seems like. He had other photos, which Chris had under the seat of the car. And I don't know if you want to get into that now. That's when we had to bribe our way out. Yeah, tell us. So we're in the Cane Field. And at that time, and you see all these taxi cab drivers everywhere. I'm saying, what's going on with these taxi cab drivers? Then you see the Columbia National Police with their lights on.

54:50would have turned out somebody killed a taxicab driver. This happened to be right when we were in the area. Just by coincidence. Yeah, we said, let's get deeper into the cane field. So we were. And we're talking about, you know, okay, the raid, where is your security? What's the entry points? How can we get in? We're trying to talk so fast so we get the information. Is he mad at you guys? Is he like, why didn't you get this done? I mean, he was disappointed, obviously. Yeah. Because he knew the lay of the land. He knows there's people on the inside of that raid working for the cartel. It's just his life is the one most in danger.

55:23So we're talking to him, trying to get this information. And all of a sudden, we see a Columbia National Police van pull up with his lights on. So he gets out. First thing he does is separate us. Now, they separate Chris from me. They put Chris next to the car. There is a lieutenant and a sergeant. The sergeant is searching the vehicle. Luckily, he didn't look under your seat. So me and Jorge, we are with the lieutenant. You guys got put as a pair. Yeah, and the lieutenant's looking at us going, what are you guys doing here? Does he know, Jorge? Exactly. No, he doesn't. That's why we met where we met, because we were an hour outside of Cali.

55:56Oh, thank God. Because he'd be dead if that happened. It gets even worse. Yeah, he goes, I'm going to have to take you guys in to the police station. And we knew our lives could be jeopardized, but really, Jorge's life would be jeopardized. And there is no way we're going to let that happen. So I had like$600 of operational fees with me. I gave it to Jorge. I said, go ahead and bribe him. So he gave him the 600 and he goes, whoa, I'm not taking that. If you're not doing nothing wrong, why are you bribing me? I'm thinking, man, we got the only legit copy. The only two. The only two. Oh, my God.

56:27So what we did before they came, we had all of our IDs and our guns. We threw it in the cane field. We couldn't be identified as DEA, right? Because if we said we were DEA, it would compromise him immediately. Exactly. So we had to go into our whole undercover cover story is that we were German scientists. that we were working at this agricultural center, which is where we were meeting. And then we were researching alternative crop development. It didn't go that far. I mean, because he realized, no, no, these guys are Americans. So at that point, he goes, why are you trying to bribe me? You're going to go to the police station.

56:59I'm thinking, yeah, you're going to take us to the police station. You'll probably take the money. But he kept on saying, go into the police station. Oh, boy. So I'm trying to get Chris's attention. I'm thinking, okay, what can we do? If he tells us to get in that van. Yeah, we're not going. We're throwing down at that point. Try to come and dream or do something. So we were that close. We were that close. And he hosted his Beretta. And I'm thinking, okay, I can take him. But I hope Chris can take him. They had Uzis too. With a Uzi. Oh, my God. All of a sudden, I heard Jorge scream out, Somos homosexualis.

57:32We're gay. That means we are homosexuals. Oh! And I went, holy shit. And I looked around. That lieutenant's eyes got really big. and he goes we just want to be left alone the Americans want to be left alone we've just come here we want to just have alone time this is really so uncomfortable this is something that makes total sense yeah now I get why they want yeah my eyes are like this and the lieutenant sergeant walked over to me and Jorge and they look at us up and down they walk over to Chris. Chris had longer hair. Looked him up and down. This checks out. And they were worried I wouldn't blend in in Columbia, right?

58:14Took the money. Said, you guys leave. So when we were walking out, I said, hey man, that's great. How do you come up with that? He goes, look at Chris's hair. I thought it wouldn't work out. That is so wild. It was brilliant. It was obviously something that they weren't expecting and they hadn't gone over that in their police academy training thing because they didn't know what to do. And as bad as that situation could have been, you know, Kiki Camarena, right? We're worried they're going to take us and they're going to kidnap us and kill us. And that was some of the best undercover work that me and Dave did during that meeting because when he said we're gay, none of us batted an eyelash, right?

58:46You would think we would laugh or something or smirk, but we were like, oh, that's our way out. Oh my God, that's brilliant. But yeah, we couldn't be identified as DA. We had to throw our weapons, our IDs. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

59:11Okay, so with that information, now who do you approach that you can trust with it to initiate the next raid? By this point, we had started work with two of these specialized units attached to the intelligence community. By this point, based on the information that we were getting from Salcedo, Dave and I are working 100 % unilaterally. No one in the Colombian government has any idea what we're doing at this point, right? So three of you. Jorge, once we get back to Cali, he can't be seen with us. No, I'm just saying you three are the only humans that know. Yes. So we're watching these suspected buildings where Miguel was at because he sent us two photographs.

59:47He goes, I think he's in one of these two buildings because where I have security stationed, there's only one way in and one way out. And it has to be these two buildings. Right. So we were focused on those two buildings. And then we started to get a little bit more information. And we knew that Miguel had fired all of his domestic staff after the last raid. Right. So he got new maids. He got new executive assistants. And he brought in these two Afro-Columbian maids to do his meal prep and stuff because of his hypoglycemia. So one night at about one o 'clock in the morning, we're doing our own surveillance and we look through the binoculars.

1:00:20What's that? Well, we did surveillance. We were at a statue. It's like a little park. And we would sit there and we would drink beer and hang. There was a bunch of locals around. And you could see a cane field from the distance and they were burning the cane field. So it was actually nice. So people would just lean against the hill, drink their beers, and watch the cane field. It was like a hangout. So you're occasionally looking through binoculars? We're looking through binoculars. Yeah, but we would pretend like we're looking at the burning sugar can feel because other people were doing the same thing.

1:00:47And then a light came on in the kitchen at about 1 o 'clock in the morning, and we started to look through the binoculars, and I was able to see these two Afro-Columbian maids. So that was a key that we saw the maids working at 1 o 'clock because we knew they're making him meal to control his hypoglycemia. So we called for the raid, and we brought these teams in from Bogota, 210 miles away, and they came over. We didn't tell them what they were doing. We actually lied to them. We told them that we were going to hit a location over here, which had nothing to do with Miguel, but actually we were going after the head of the county.

1:01:17You didn't have a lot of people with you, did you? There were four DEA agents, one or two Intel community guys. If I can back up just for a minute, because we kind of narrowed down where it was at. And he goes, there is a concrete channel for water to flow through. You can go through there and go through the back way. So Chris and I, we actually went up there and walked it discreetly. And yeah, it opened right up. But the operation involved coming down the side of a mountain after we transited through that flood control channel. So these people were like, I thought this way we were raiding a chemical company.

1:01:50Where are we going? Why are we climbing mountains and stuff? So nobody knew anything about what we were doing or where we were going. There was repelling involved? We had to come down the side of the mountain. We didn't have to repel, but a lot of people fell and jumped and slid. It was pretty hectic. When we did our little recon beforehand, just me and Chris, we weren't able to see the very end, the drop off. Down the side of the mountain. And Jorge told us, tell them to take a rope. So we told the Navy commandos, we said, hey, take a rope. So they did take a rope, but I guess it didn't help out.

1:02:23Well, it was pitch black, right? Yeah. The terrain was super rugged and treacherous. It was pitch black at night. We did the raid at 4 o 'clock in the morning. People were falling. They couldn't see. The prosecutor we were with broke her heel. Oh. People had to help her out. Other people couldn't make it down the hill. So it was pretty treacherous descent down the side of the mountain. All right, so you get into this apartment, and what happens? We spread out. We start going room to room. Now, this is a very nice place, right? This one is about 4 ,000 square feet, very modern, one apartment per floor, 19-story building.

1:02:54Very nice. So we start running through the apartment, turning on lights, looking in the rooms, and one of the Navy commandos we were with, we hear him yell from the back of the room, I got him, I got him. And I looked at Jerry, who was with us, Jerry Salome. And then we ran into the back of the bedroom where he was. He was holding him by the shirt. Miguel Rodriguez, the commando, was holding him, pulling him out of the hidden compartment in the closet. He was just getting ready to get in. There was a concrete door about six inches thick. So what he would do is he would slide the door closed and lock it from the inside with horizontal bars.

1:03:28And then he was with one of his ex-wives. So he always had to have somebody else there in the apartment to close the collector and seal it up, right? Because what this one was is imagine two file cabinets, two dressers side by side. You would have to take the drawers out to access the collector. So once he got in and locked the doors, his ex-wife or the assistant would come and put the drawers back in. So when you walked into that closet, you would just see a dresser. You would never think to take the drawer. And even if you took the drawers out, it was so perfectly constructed, you would just see the back of the wall.

1:04:01Yeah, yeah, yeah. But inside there, you would have an oxygen tank, water, food. My God. The amount of preparation to stay on the run. Yeah, so it was a walk-in closet, and it was basically three feet shorter than it should have been. They built out the back wall of it. Wow. And the only reason that we were able to grab him was because we had spoken to the attorney general in advance of Columbia, and we got special permission to do like a no-knock search warrant to knock the door down. Which is unheard of there. which they didn't want to do because these are very extravagant apartments and houses and millions of dollars.

1:04:35So we were able to get up there and knock the door down after a couple of whacks and get in there very quickly. So he didn't have enough time to get into that Coletta, that hidden compartment and put the drawers back. But if we were probably a minute or two, he would have already been sealed up. Still, till this day, we would be in there. Oh, my God. Looking for stuff, we would have never found him because this was probably the most highly sophisticated compartment that we had found in Columbia. You just think of the logistics of this man's life. Like all of these safe houses need to be being built around the clock because he's got to move nonstop.

1:05:07They all have to have the coletta. That's right. Like the amount of staff required and construction and all this shit to stay ahead of it. Yep. And these were very skilled architects and carpenters that were building these. Now, some of them were pretty rudimentary. I mean, they weren't that great. The last couple we found were highly sophisticated and we would have never found them. They were very, very skillfully done. Well, unlimited budget. A lot of times they go inside the hidden compartment. You might know he's here. We just have to find him. But after you've been there for an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, you know, the Colombians might lose interest.

1:05:42Well, I was going to say you're against the clock of when does someone high enough up chain of command kick you out before you can find them? Which happened several times. The first one, when he got out, the captain who was our liaison, he actually just went in and took him, put him in the back of his car and drove out. That's what happened after we left. Oh my God. He went back in, extracted him out of the compartment, and took him to the new place. You're a liaison. Now, we didn't know that at the time. How much were those guys making? So you got the head of securities making a grand a month.

1:06:10What were the payoffs? Great question. For that extraction alone, he got$50 ,000. Wow. But that's back in those days. It was 1994. Also, if I'm Jorge, I'm furious. The most offensive part of this whole story is what they were paying Jorge. I'm more appalled by that than the drug trade. I mean, I'm glad because otherwise he would have had more of an incentive to just stay and deal with it. He might have been like, I'm stuck in this life, but damn, it's good. I got hippos like Pablo. And that's what's good about the book because we go into excruciating detail about all of our time on the ground operating in Cali.

1:06:42All of the raids that we did, what we did, why we did what we did, why we didn't do this and why we did this. And it's from our point of view, right? So you're on the ground. You're kind of like with us through this journey that we're taking. and you're getting a lot of inside information about the operations that we did, which is pretty cool because there hasn't been anything other than Narcos, which is 50, 60 % true about the Cali cartel. And it's much lesser known than Pablo, right? You know, Chris is one of the leads of Narcos 3. I mean, he's not an actor, but the lead actor is playing him.

1:07:11There's an actor who plays me. The other guy's playing me. He doesn't have my name though. I was still on the job. Yeah. Were you a little resentful that he was getting all this love and you're like, hey, he had a partner and his name's Dave. If you can make it work for yourself, go ahead. Can you quantify or make the experience relative to other experiences in your life? The moment where you walk in the room and you see he's actually being held. And that barring some crazy intervention, you have him. And I'll add, I think more rewarding than for the guys that are working on Pablo, which is like he got killed in front of them.

1:07:44You're not going to get to talk to him. There's not going to be a prosecution. What was that sensation when you see he's right there, we have him? Thank God it's over. First thing I said, because at that point we were on the ground in Cali 15 months or so, and we were exhausted. We were happy because it was over because now Salcedo can get him and his family out into WITSEC in the U.S. When they brought him, the Navy SEAL, Columbia Navy SEAL, dragged him out and he pretty much plopped them right in front of me and Jerry. I was only a couple feet away from him. What if he said, oh, my God, it's the homosexuals I heard about?

1:08:19Yeah, exactly. I know you. But he had the deadest eyes, like that thousand-yard stare that you can just look into and go like, man, this guy's killed a lot of people or ordered them to be killed. It was pretty chilling to actually sit there, and I just told him, seco, well, sit near seco, well, like, it's over. But relief, thanks, and that Salcedo was safe because you imagine every day we had to bear that burden of— of getting this guy killed. Exactly. And after that first failed rape, we thought, oh man, we got him killed. Yeah. That's so stressful. You have the stakes? The stakes of it. That wasn't the final, though.

1:08:55I mean, we still had other work to do. We told Saucedo, all right, get your family. We're going to start pulling you out. He goes, no, we still have more work to do. Oh. And he goes, we have to get Palomari. He's a hero. Yeah, absolutely. He did not become a suspect after Miguel was caught. So how did he help with the other? He just told us where Palomari's wife was working. Tell them who Palomari was. Oh, Palomari was the accountant. And he was the accountant that knew all the skeletons. It was Palomari who we needed after the arrest because all the books were coded. And he can cipher all the codes, tell you where all the money went.

1:09:33Keep in mind, Palomari, he was from Chile. So he can be extradited. So that's why the Calais Quartel won him dead. and pretty much he kind of made some stupid comments before during one of the police raids. I worked for the Rodriguez's. He shouldn't have been saying. They knew that he would talk. We got with the wife. She met us in Bogota and they decided to cooperate. The cartel was actively trying to kill the accountant because he had been indicted in the U.S. so he wasn't a Colombian national so he was eligible to be extradited back to the U.S. And plus, they had raided his office, and there were these highly sensitive documents that were seized out of his office related to corruption, to cartel.

1:10:12So he was like number one on the cartel hit list. Shockingly, they didn't kill him. Well, we got to him first, and we were able to extract him, exfiltrate him out of Cali, and ultimately back into the U.S. Now, you were there for 12 years, Columbia, yeah? Off and on, correct. And you... Three years. So what were you doing the remaining 10 and a half years? In Columbia? Yeah. We all left Columbia about the same time, in mid-1997, we either got promoted or we went back to the U.S. on different assignments. I went back to Columbia a couple of years later for a three-year tour to work against the North Valley cartel and some of the other organizations that were popping up.

1:10:46And then I went back to the U.S. for a cup of coffee. And then I went back to Columbia again for just over six years. And we worked on, you know, investigations targeting, again, the North Valley cartel, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, which was a designated terrorist group at the time, which was a left-wing group, as well as a paramilitary group, which was also the AUC designated as a foreign terrorist organization. And I had been promoted again up. Did you have a good life in Colombia those years? Yes. You know, you get a nice apartment. You're treated like a diplomat. Yeah. It's affordable there too, right?

1:11:16Do you miss it? Because I heard you went back for Narcos 3 and you were like, yeah, cool. That's it. And I want to get out. No, no. I mean, I went back to Colombia recently. I did a six episode show with the Discovery Channel called Finding Escobar's Millions. We went all over Columbia, tearing up the ground. Did you find some? We didn't find anything. I know that would be the next big treasure hunt. Yeah, but people have been looking for that for 30 years. So I went back to Columbia there and then Narcos too when I was on set in Cali. But what we're talking about here is that Cali had changed a lot.

1:11:49Places where me and Dave would meet people or we would do our surveillances, it was completely different. Everything was built up. But some of the stuff we saw, We went back to some of the buildings where we actually did raids that still belonged to the cartel that they couldn't sell. So being back was kind of surreal. And then going out, filming on set right in the cane field. Yeah. Where we had met Salcedo in the same place. That was pretty cool. Yeah. But it was a little different, though, going back. What a story. What a lot. What a story. It's not shocking they made a hit TV show out of it.

1:12:16It's hair-raising. Okay. Now, these are my questions, not specifically about the work itself in Columbia, but just whatever overall tensions you were or weren't managing. So just in general, what is it like to do that job knowing whoever you grab means nothing? You kill Pablo, Kelly's on top. You get rid of the Kelly guys, this group's on top. What is it like to have such a Sisyphusian task? It's like so long as Americans want to snort cocaine, it is what it is. You're exactly right. Now, what was told to us at the academy by one of our instructors, He goes, you'll never solve this cocaine or narcotics problem.

1:12:56Our job is to slow it down. Because there's only like, it floats around with 5 ,000 VA agents. There's not that many. That's worldwide. He goes, we put our finger in the dike. But anything behind us is chaos. Yeah, so how do you keep your dedication and your enthusiasm and your passion for it knowing, I mean, I hate to say it so cruelly, but just the second you get the guy, there'll be another guy right there. We always had a saying in DEA that you may lose the war, but we'll win every battle that we choose to fight. Cali Cortel was a battle. But that was our job, though, right? That's what we signed up to do, and that's what we were sent there to do.

1:13:31You take pride in what you do. Like my dad used to tell me all the time, whatever you do in life, do it to the best of your ability. Yeah, you're kind of forcing a bit of Buddhism with the whole thing, which is like I think you have to, I would imagine you'd have to get purposely myopic. Like, yeah, I'm not actually going to focus on that bigger strata. It's just like, this is the guy today. This is the mission. This is what I'm focused on. You're absolutely right. But when you were burnt out and it was towards the end and you're worried about Jorge, in those moments are you like, what the fuck is this all about?

1:14:02Like, I'm about to kill myself. We're going to get Jorge killed. And everyone's going to snort the same amount of cocaine. Well, you know, it did affect the cocaine trade for two days. Sure. Oh, my God. It's very admirable. It really is. I think a lot of people would be like, I'm done now. We just had to see it through, right? We had invested so much time and energy. And at one point I told him like, you know what, dude, I'm tired of this. Let's just pass it on. And he wouldn't let me. He's like, dude, this is what we were sent here to do. This is our job. We have to see it through. And by that point, it had become pretty much an obsession for us because we were finishing that one way or the other, whether Jorge got killed, whether something happened to us or we got thrown out of the country, one way or the other, we were going to finish.

1:14:44You compartmentalize it and say, OK, this is our battle. This is what we're focusing on. We're not looking at the whole scope of things. Just this area. You guys didn't have families at the time, like kids or? I didn't. No, no. I was married, but. That helps, probably. At one point in the book, too, we make a vow. This was before we started to get successful. We'd been on the ground probably, I don't know, six, eight months at this point. And we had just launched these operations at the airport because the cartel was flying in these plane loads full of money, like 50, 60,$70 million at a shot.

1:15:17and we went out three separate times and we missed everyone and we can tell it was obviously compromised because of some stuff and we outlined it in the book and we sat there and we made a vow and we said we are not leaving this country until every one of those four motherfuckers are dead or in handcuffs right and that was the vow we made and we stuck to it i was in an off-road race and another guy that was also in the race he was a retired dea agent and i got talking to him And he was talking about marijuana as if he had just seen Reefer Madness. Like there was this crazy kind of Pollyanna belief in whatever he was taught about the DEA and marijuana is killing people.

1:16:01And he's very troubled that his daughter smoked marijuana. And I'm like, well, would you prefer she was drunk? And he's like, absolutely. And I'm like, okay, even though you know that alcohol is probably worse for her and she'll probably drive and crash or there'll be violence. And I was just kind of shocked with how rigid he was in the wake of us having loosened up as a country and the results being in. They teach you at the academy that marijuana is a gateway drug. That if you smoke marijuana, your odds are going into a higher type drugs, cocaine or heroin. So if you don't smoke marijuana, you won't do that.

1:16:33But you have to really look today at what does marijuana provide? Does it provide any health benefits? That needs to be looked into. Because, you know, the THC level today compared to 30 years ago, it's a lot harder. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, if there is a way to help, like, cancer patients, let's look into it. Or just people are going to recreationally get fucked up. We can evaluate which one's more dangerous. Police don't arrive to domestic disputes after people have been smoking weed. They arrive after a fifth of Jack Daniels has been consumed. I mean, that's why everybody says, hey, my back hurts, and they get a prescription to get legal weed.

1:17:10There's a comedian I'm friends with, and his joke was he went to get his weed cart, and the doctor said, are you having trouble sleeping 16 hours a night? He said, yeah, I can only sleep about 12. He said, perfect. Well, I get it. I think you have to buy into that if this is your life. This is what you're doing daily. You have to stand by that. I am curious what the tension is because also you have the war on drugs. You have this insane explosion in incarceration rates. we know it's very asymmetrically affecting black folks the war on drugs itself has got some troubles yeah of course and i just wonder what it's like for you guys who have dedicated your lives to as we reframe and start to question some of the things are you at all caught in that like huh well first of all it's not a war on drugs it never was it's more of a skirmish right because there's a lot of resources and a lot of stuff that we don't do to go after the problem but there's a lot of true believers out there in dea and else that they're firm believers that you know no, illegal, can't use it.

1:18:10And then you have other people at the other end of the spectrum that are like, whatever floats your boat. We're not going to arrest ourselves out of this issue. We don't have enough people who are arresting anyone. But I don't think legalizing everything per se would be an issue. So let's say if you say, okay, drugs are legalized. Instead of McDonald's, you're going to have McDrugs and people just go in. I have reversed my position. So growing up, I was very libertarian. I was very much like, you know what? It's victimless in that you've decided to take drugs. And I think if you want to pursue that, great.

1:18:38I did it myself. I had to get sober because of it. But I always had a pretty much, let's legalize this stuff. Why have it on the black market? Why have criminals control it? Let's get the tax revenue. I have now seen the experiment run in Oregon, and I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think meth should be legal or decriminalized. I don't think heroin should be. So I find myself in an interesting reversal of my position. And then I start wondering, is this weirdly the best approach? is that we want to keep it hard enough to get that it's not the explosion of availability. We do know availability does impact.

1:19:11Look at the opioid epidemic. Of course. It was around, so we all got addicted to it. So that's undeniable. That's really fascinating, and we got to acknowledge that. So it's like, what is the fucking approach to this? Are we doing the right approach? Is it just like, keep it hard, keep it expensive? Look at it this way. We came in 1988, and at that time, I thought, you can't have any more drugs. I mean, it fought on the sky, in the traditional drugs was cocaine, heroin. But if you look at it today, there's more drugs today because you have all the synthetic drugs. Yeah. And the Mexican cartels make more money off these synthetic drugs than the regular traditional drugs.

1:19:45Yeah, chemistry is cheaper than fucking agriculture. Yeah, absolutely. And more dangerous. So what do you think? What is the strategy? It's like just keep it kind of pinched? It's kind of a no-win situation, but I think you have to attack it on all fronts. Enforcement, treatment, education, education, everything like that. But like we always say, he brought up Portland or Seattle. Imagine that times 50 ,000 if it's in every city throughout the United States. Now, we were in San Francisco. The guy had a card table set up, literally a card table with cracking heroin for sale. I was like, well, that can't be where we're going.

1:20:16I mean, imagine the health care system would be overrun, overwhelmed with overdoses. Crime would explode because you'd have more people committing crimes to get money to get more drugs. So I think you just have to try to contain it. You have to try to hit it on multifacets. The other thing, too, is education. Instead of going after high school or middle kids, let's go after the kids in elementary school. Let's get them young. Well, the other unavoidable reality is it's also been very disproportionate who gets criminalized, which is the consumer walks scot-free for the most part. The consumer of the drugs doesn't really do any jail time.

1:20:52So you have this consumer base and then you have a group of people that are going to meet the demands of this market, that these people create it. Dealers and growers can't create a market. The consumers have to create the market. True, very true. Yes and no. Tell me. Who can create the market? Say, the Mexican cartels. Because you say, okay, what's the market? Is it cocaine? Well, they will hold back the cocaine and says, no, we're going to send in more methamphetamine or something else. So if you're using cocaine, you don't have access to cocaine, you're going to go to another drug. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:21:25So that's how the cartels are managing, manipulating the drugs. But still, there's not a demand. You're exactly right. So it's like when you really chase it down in a logical experiment, you recognize the problems of the consumer. It's the consumer. And the dealers are the desperate ones. They're the ones that are doing it because they need the money. They're doing for livelihood, not kids. Well, that's why going back years ago, and we were talking to the Colombians, that's why they're saying, Cali Cartel, they have the will of the people because it's you Americans who have the demand for this.

1:21:55If I were them, I would feel guilt-free and totally like I have the moral high ground. We're not addicts. Y 'all are the fucking junkies. If there was no demand, these cartels wouldn't exist. I admire what it takes to fight your hardest for it given the overall context. Don't you think our society is where big pharma can kind of advertise directly to the client? I think it started legal in 1985 when they could do that. You can put ads on TV. You turn the TV. If your back hurts, take this pill. Foot hurts, take this pill. In the late 70s, New York had a really bad heroin problem. But if you wanted heroin, you actually had to go in to that area.

1:22:33There's a bad stigma. There was a barrier of entry that kept a lot of people out. And you had to inject it in your veins. Yeah. But nowadays, you can go on social media and get these pills with fentanyl and take it mouth. You can go to your doctor. I mean, the opioid crisis started because of doctors, not because of the street. eat. So we have to change the mindset. I take a pail, I'll be okay. But there is no good answer. There isn't. Some of these problems, you have to have a certain tolerance for the messiness of them. Now I had a grand conspiracy theory cooking. It's like the only one I've ever been able to buy into.

1:23:06I was like, well, the drug cartels are not incentivized to put fentanyl in Coke. It's not good for the people buying the Coke to think they might overdose on fentanyl when they didn't know they were getting it. I don't understand the incentive of putting fentanyl in Coke. I never understood that either to explain to me how much money that they can make. And just the people that's overdosing, they'll say in the United States, we have an endless supply of clients. Yeah. I just, I'm confused as an ex-drug addict. If I go buy cocaine, I'm not trying to buy an opiate. So if I buy cocaine and you give me an opiate and then I almost die, I don't want to fucking buy from you.

1:23:39So then I was like, you know, the ultimate Machiavellian move for the DEA would be to just be putting fentanyl and Coke. Cause then make it so fucking scary. Everyone's afraid to do coke that would be so highly illegal but i'm like if anyone has an incentive here for fentanyl it would have to be the dea i just don't know how it benefits the consumer or the supplier fentanyl is one of our biggest issue right now oh yeah because when you go eat at a restaurant you know you have that the gram of sugar yeah that would be enough to kill 500 people yeah it's insane there was a 60 minutes segment on fentanyl and they showed this little tiny pile of grain and they said this would be enough to kill an elephant.

1:24:18And then the bag, it said, would be enough to kill a city of 50 ,000 people. Well, now you have carfentanil. This carfentanil is used. It's even worse, yeah. What is it? Carfentanil. It's stronger than fentanyl. Carfentanil is used to put down elephants. I agree with you. I don't understand why anyone, it's like, why would we kill our clients? It really doesn't make sense. There's a big mystery. They have so many clients. But a lot of it goes to, though, is that they have to put in the precise amount. Exactly. Yeah. And you're talking about granules of salt. So you're having these people who are not chemists.

1:24:52Is fentanyl extra addictive? Because then that makes sense to me then. If you want to put the exact amount in so that people are extra addicted so they keep coming back so they don't die. But they're just opposite highs. It's really weird. Like if you went to order a glass of wine and I said, well, I gave you marijuana. People love marijuana. You'd be like, I would have got marijuana. That's the part that as a drug addict, I don't really understand. Now, if you were selling it as a speedball in a bag, that's a great product. I was going to say, I thought that was good speedball. Yeah. But I think you'd want to know you're taking a speedball.

1:25:23You got to plan your night accordingly. Wild. Oh, well, guys, this is fascinating. I can't believe you really lived these lives. It's absolutely worthy of a TV show. And it was. But your book is incredible. after Escobar taking down the notorious Cali Godfathers and the biggest drug cartel in history. So cool. What a fucking feather in y 'all's cap. Brought down the biggest cartel in history. Thank you. Pretty gangster. Couple of white bozos coming out. Exactly. You guys are great. Thanks so much for coming in. Thanks for having us. Yeah, I hope everyone checks out the book. It's out now. Take care.

1:26:01Hi there, this is Hermian Permian. If you like that, you're going to love the fact check. Miss Monica. Hello. Hi. I have an update. Okay, let's hear it. So this I'm kind of famous for this, right? I've done this once before. You may recall, I was in Italy and a man offered me his leather jacket. So I invited him to our home and he stayed with us for a week and he didn't speak English. And Kristen was like, that was a pretty wild invite. She was lovely to him and it was fine. But, you know, wild invite stranger for a week. Normally something she would do, not you. So it is weird. I know I get these weird moments of like great optimism and humanity.

1:26:43And and I think I don't know what I think, but all to say about three months ago, Freddie, who you've I've told you about a million times, Delta's buddy who I adore, Freddie, I think he's the greatest little boy, so popular and confident. And so he's over all the time. And then I see his mom quite often, almost every morning at drop off. And she's lovely. We chat every time we've talked, you know, we see each other. And then the dad, Blake, I've seen just a few times at like, you know, the big run at the back of the school or whatever the big school events are. And I say three months ago, you guys should come to Nashville this summer with Freddie and bring all the kids.

1:27:30And it felt so good when I said it. And I just was like, this is going to be great. And then, you know, for the next couple months, I was like, well, that was a pretty big swing. We've never, ever hung out with anyone other than Freddie. And so we had like a dinner before we left a couple of months ago. We were like, you know, minimally, we should all go out to dinner. and uh so we went out to dinner but you know this whole summer we've had visitors the whole time but they've been family or old friends and then this was just looming that this family I've invited to live with us for a week who we don't really know is coming and so I had anxiety about that and uh I Delta and I picked him up from the airport on Friday Kristen and Lincoln had flown back to LA to see the Hollywood bull, Cynthia Revo thing.

1:28:20Jesus Christ. So just D money and I, the big man upstairs, superstar. And, um, and so they arrived, uh, again, I don't have Kristen there as a buffer or helper and it's just Delta and I, and it started off immediately really well. Right. And then it just got better and better and better. And Blake and I were broing out so hard. He's a drummer, it turns out He was super into the punk scene Like I was We had all this in common He's a rascal The kids, the other two kids Who are tinier I completely fell in love with One of them is a raccoon animal, the little girl She's a vampire and a raccoon And she said We were watching Tom Cruise Oh, we were watching Days of Thunder Continuing the Tom Cruise's party and someone in the movie said fuck and then you hear her go he said fuck I love swear words how do they say fuck this is the tiniest little I laugh for 20 minutes straight this tiny cute little raccoon I like to say oh my god what makes her raccoon like oh my god well she's a couple things she's definitely Arya Stark too she's always got like a knife in her hand and a weapon Oh, my God.

1:29:44Oh, yeah, yeah. She's like feral and impossibly cute. She looks a lot like Vinny. She's like the girl version of Vinny. Oh, my God. Way too big of eyes. You got to see her. She's incredible. And then the little boy, Sal, is just so sweet. Oh, my God. So, my God, it was such a fun visit. And I said to them the night before they left, can we all acknowledge how high risk this was for everyone involved and they both came clear and they're like oh yeah we were like what did we say yes to we don't even know these people yeah all of us all of us were like what is this hail mary pass we all committed to um but with high risk came great great reward and it was so fun and delta was she was driving freddie around on the golf cart the whole time like she was a little boss and she had the run of the yeah run you know run of the roost is that an expression she was just on fire and now here's where it's gonna get controversial okay and i'm just gonna i'm gonna ask you to give it a shot oh what am i saying you already went never mind we're not gonna have a a dust up we took them to Brick Tops.

1:31:03Oh yeah. Great. Great restaurant. So I think I have this right. People could correct me. I believe the founder of Houston's and this person were partners and they split up. And the man who didn't stay with Houston's in Hillstone started Brick Tops. I'm pretty sure that's the history. Okay. Maybe Rob will check it while we're on the. Yeah, Rob, check it. I didn't ask and I got different information. Okay. Yeah. But as everyone knows, Houston's is our favorite restaurant. But I have to say, and this is crazy to say, Brick Tops is better. I disagree. You disagree. I loved it. What did you order at Kristen's birthday party?

1:31:52I got a burger. It was incredible. It was so good. and I have the deviled eggs and bacon yep so good um I thought it was an incredible meal I would love to go back there and I think Houston's is better personally just just a little bit yeah we're split well I'm not finding any connection between Houston's owned by Hillstone Restaurant Group and Brick Top is owned by a separate guy named Joe well I guess could you ask if those two are ever partners? That was my search. Yeah. My guess is, and this happened, has happened with Houston's a lot, that people work for Houston's or like their managers or whatever.

1:32:36And then they start their own restaurants. And a lot of them are very based off of Houston's. There's one here in LA. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what that's, that's like, Definitely that. I found something. Bricktop's owner, Joe, was one of the original co-founders of Houston's. There we go. Yeah. That's what I thought and have been told. With George? By reputable people. Yes, George Beal. Yeah, George Beal, yeah, is the founder. George Beal and Joe Ledbetter and Vic Brainstedder. The first Houston's ever was in Nashville. It closed, but it was there. 1977, the first Houston's in Nashville.

1:33:2177. Yeah. Wow. They've been at it. I know. Well, anyway. I was right. So, yeah, it's got some shared DNA vibe. Definitely. Yes. So great. Okay. So that was that. What a win. So sad to see him leave yesterday. Now, last night, we had a very unique experience. I have heard of the Grand Ole Opry through many a Whale and Jennings songs, Many a Hank Jr., Hank Sr. Don't you know they fired him from the Opry? And that caused his greatest shame. I've never been to the Grand Ole Opry. I've only heard of it. And we went last night. And what a place. Have you been? I don't think so. There were multiple acts.

1:34:11Everyone did like three songs. You know, these are all like, like several of the people that played had written a bunch of Miley Cyrus songs or had written all these hit songs. So it's mostly like the songwriters who are also performers. And so, you know, it's just like premium musicians, not the stars, but the song, that was really fun. And then, um, yeah, Leanne Morgan, who I'm new to, but she's so radical. She's 59. She had been doing comedy for like 25 years and was going to quit basically and in the last few years has just exploded she had a netflix one hour special she's got a show with chuck lorre now on netflix and she's like 59 and it's just so rad and life affirming and then who came out monica after her jelly roll ah yeah jelly roll who we were so close interviewing here in Nashville and then he was just on tour um I got to meet him backstage he's so lovely what a sweet dude and what a performer oh my god I recommend everyone see Jelly Roll what a monster and then okay beyond that you know what I was noticing which my continual kind of like just observing the culture and how it's like different down here and it's really genuinely different and especially at a place like the grand old opry right where it's just like it's tradition it's hank senior it's all these famous it's it's a hollowed venue yeah and you've got a host of the night and she is like bringing out the different acts and then she'll interview people for five ten minutes after and then she'll like read some stories of people in the audience whatever all to say there was this I was like having a hard time pinpointing what was going on it all just felt so nostalgic it felt like we were seeing this in the 70s or 80s and there was like she had a delivery that just made you feel good like it was outdated I guess in some sense, but it just felt so good and positive.

1:36:26And what I was really detecting is I was like, you know what it is? There's just a real absence of cynicism. That's kind of like one of the, it's one of the ingredients I've kind of isolated is like, there's really just a much lower rate of general cynicism, which is interesting to observe and, um, and, and quite pleasant. And, you know, everyone's talking about Jesus, right? Like, and obviously that's not my bag. But even Jelly Roll is talking a lot about Jesus and how Jesus helped him get his life together. And everyone's on board. And I was a little bit like, yeah, I mean, you come to atheism through cynicism.

1:37:15I do. That's how I got there. I'm kind of cynical of this story. I'm skeptical. It doesn't hold water to me. That's not, yeah, I disagree. I don't think being, I think cynicism isn't the same thing as critical thinking. Cynicism is negative. It has a negative streak through it. I'm going to get the real definition just so we can read it and see what we think. I think you're right, but what's the definition of cynicism? A cynical person tends to believe that people are primarily motivated by self-interest and distrust others' sincerity or integrity. Philosophical origin. Citizen was originally a school of philosophy founded in ancient Greece.

1:38:01The cynics rejected wealth, power, and social conventions, believing virtue was the only good and that it came from living in accordance with nature. Huh. Well, let's just say that we would agree, probably. The line between skepticism and cynicism is pretty thin or not for you. Sure. I think that's. Yeah, I think that's right. I also think it's a little dangerous because cynicism is, to me, a pejorative. And I don't. To me, skepticism is not. To me, skepticism is a smart way to go through life. like is required actually to, I don't know, like come to your own real beliefs about everything, anything.

1:38:53Yeah. So it's interesting. So, so Kristen had a long follow-up on the ride home because it was like very palpable and it was interesting. And it was much different than anything you would see in Los Angeles. And that was fascinating and worth talking about. And what's interesting is like it's a two-sided coin so one thing is like kristen's like well i don't like that the notion of like you're an addict because the devil's a liar and evil tempted you and sin found you because the devil's at work and evil's at work like that really um takes away your own personal responsibility from your addiction or your cheating or whatever the thing is you're saying, oh, the devil found me.

1:39:33So that's true. But on the flip side, that wasn't rubbing me the wrong way. What was rubbing me the wrong way is, dude, you can't give this guy in the sky credit for your sobriety. Like you did that. God did not come down and take a bottle out of your hand. I want you to own that you did that. So it's interesting because so on one side, there's a lack of humility, which is like, I'm not even responsible for this. But then on the success side, there is great humility because he's not even taking credit for it. It's like, he's saying God intervened and did something for me I couldn't do. So that's an interesting mix, right?

1:40:13It's like, which side of this equation are you going to be really humble on? The fact that you own your responsibility in causing it, and then by which you get to own your success in conquering it or are you going to say I'm not fully responsible for it nor am I responsible for the solution so I think it's like it's kind of a net it's net the same which is interesting yeah it's it but it's similar to me not similar it's exactly the same as the sim conversation we had with Riz and your problems with it right where you're like if we just say we were assigned a character in a video game that's so problematic because what about all these other characters that are suffering?

1:40:57Like, so God gave you this thing, but isn't giving another person the same thing? It breaks down so quickly because even if they're like, well, God made me sober, there is still a, I agree that there's a humility because you're not taking any credit, But it's also like God chose me to be sober. Yeah. So it's just interesting. You already know how I feel, which is like, I don't believe in God, but I am seeing, I'm just recognizing what is the outcome of it. And that's interesting. And it's interesting that there's not humility on one side, but then there's a lot of humility on the other side and then flipped for someone like me, who's an atheist.

1:41:37That's interesting. But I think the bigger, so then it led to Chris and I saying, oh, what's interesting is she's like, no, I would come to that realization. I need to get sober and here's the technique I needed to use. And I would credit that for it. And I said, yeah, but you know, we're really just arguing between is like, what mechanism do you want to choose to get there? So it's like, you could choose my version, but the results not drinking and taking pills. his can be God and the result is not taking and drinking pills like we're really kind of just debating what mechanism you want to use to get there and if both are valid that's interesting and then but deeper than that and this runs the risk of offending some people I had this moment where I was like you know I'm on the outside thinking oh they just lock stock believe that God invented all animals in seven days and that Jesus is the son of God and they're the same person and there's no women involved.

1:42:48And somehow they think all that is accurate. But I got a different sense sitting there last night where I was a little bit like, no, I think it might more be just a choice of a holistic worldview. and you're not necessarily the whether I believe in every aspect of it isn't what's important. The importance is I have this declaration of humility to this thing. And that's this really bonding thing between all of us. And I guess I think I thought it was a little more literal than maybe it might be, if that makes any sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's true for a lot of people, I don't think everyone believes every single word to the letter.

1:43:38I think some people do and they say it right. They're like, the Bible says this, so you can't do this. Like, and it's, and it is often used to tell other people what they're doing wrong or right, which it's weaponized. Yeah, for sure. But it's definitely religion is a community. It's an group. It's, it's, it is that, I mean. And the result for them, which again is like, you're kind of arguing over mechanisms to get to a result. And the result for them is like this real sense of shared community. And in my like, um, you know, just kind of unfolding a lot of things sitting here, which is really fun to have as an experience, which is like, I also, the other thing I've been aware of since I've been here is like, I'm so used to being in LA where there's 12 million of us and we're really packed in on top of each other and resources feel very scarce and water is sometimes an issue.

1:44:35And we have fires, we have a lot of this stuff. That is the world we live in. And we're very worried about being sustainable because there's so many of us in this little area. And I was thinking, if you're sitting here where I'm at, it's just endless trees and lush and it rains nonstop and everything's growing and there's a kabillion insects and it's like here everything feels quite healthy like this place is thriving you know like nature's on fire here i understand if you're sitting here and you're like i don't know what they're all so freaked out about like everything's fucking great i mean because what are you surrounded by you know what you're surrounded by is going to definitely impact how you think the world is or isn't really vulnerable or on the brink or teetering, you know.

1:45:28But it is. It's not the same. It's not fires. But there's other disasters that are happening over on that side of the country as well. And like, you know, there's hurricanes, there's tornadoes, there's the Asheville situation. Like it's still happening. It's just not it doesn't look the way it looks here. I guess what I'm trying to say is if you're in Michigan and you're surrounded by the Great Lakes and you're hearing the rest of the country freak out about freshwater, intellectually, you understand that that's their experience. But your day-to-day experience is like, no, water actually isn't a problem at all.

1:46:05I see it everywhere. And I'm just, I'm not, I have no emotional connection to that because that's not at all what I'm experiencing. I would just have to be like intellectually traveling to where you're at and thinking about all that. But just my day to day, if you're in Michigan surrounded by the Great Lakes, I understand why you're not thinking about water. Yeah, I mean, yes, I agree. And I think it's not we're not obligated to be like constantly thinking about. other people's plights, but we are obligated when those come up to have empathy and sympathy for them and do force yourself to put yourself in those people's positions across the board for everyone, us too.

1:46:53Like everyone needs to be doing that. I mean, we're just talking about this country, let alone like the world. Oh, yeah. I just I've I'm experiencing the massive different mindset you have if you're in a rural area versus an urban area, you know, and I grew up in a rural area and then I went to an urban area for 30 years and now I'm back in this rural area and I'm just realizing like, oh yeah, you feel a lot differently. You think about different things. There's not people over there's no traffic. You're not like, you know, a lot of these concerns you just have to know exists, but you're not having any experience or even like when I look at the rural response to COVID, like, yes, that makes sense to me sitting here.

1:47:34When we were in L.A. and you're just like packed on people, you're like, oh, this thing's going to fucking explode like an atom bomb. And it's true because you're and just yeah, you're going to have different mindsets if you're living in tons of ample land or you're really packed in on each other. And it's kind of predictable, you know? Right. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:48:09Speaking of being packed in, did you hear that in Harlem, there's a big breakout of Legionnaire's disease? Oh, no. That's the one you get from AC units? Yeah, it's in the air. Yeah, yeah. Like 58 people have it and a couple have died. I have a friend who got it two years ago from a hotel with a stanky air conditioner. And he was telling me that. And Aaron and I were in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We're in a restaurant. I'm looking at this AC vent on the ceiling and it's just like black mold mud. Just all caked all around the register from whatever the difference in moisture level between the AC. And I was like, oh, my God, that thing is just spewing Legionnaire's disease.

1:48:57I'm overly worried about Legionnaire's disease. Well, I'm glad to hear that because yesterday I was like, oh, I definitely got it in New York. Like, I definitely got Legionnaire's because I have like a little bit of a cold or like a little under the weather. So I was looking it up and then, you know, it's like Harness, headache, things I have. So we can't. The double H's, Harness and headache? We can't rule it out. H squared? 2H. It is a scary one because it's a silent killer just pouring out of an AC unit. Yeah, I know. So that's bad. I hope everyone - I will say, though, as we've talked about, some diseases are terribly named.

1:49:41Like my penis disease I had for a year, Peyronie's. Don't do that on top of having a penis issue. Carbuncles. Pepperoni's disease, carbuncles. at least Legionnaires feels like it has some pride and glory. Like you got it maybe in battle. It sounds like it was in war. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So you're not like as embarrassed to go like I had a bad case of Legionnaires. But I also like I like that it's Legionnaires because it also has the transmission element included in the name Legionnaires. So it is transported by air and it's easy for me to remember that way. It's kind of a built in mnemonic device.

1:50:26OK, great. I hadn't even considered that part of it. Yeah. I speaking of luck, it's lucky that I probably don't have Legionnaires. So that's my transition. OK. OK. I had a moral dilemma. Oh, fun. Yes. So I was staying at the Bowery Hotel. At the Bowery, they give you the key is a is on this tassel. It's this like old school, huge red tassel with like gold top. And it has the number of your room engraved in there. You it's it's like it's a thing at the Bowery. And you can't take it. Right. Like it's it's not like a regular key. now I can already feel where this is going but go ahead okay I was in room 11 11 oh yeah okay okay okay that's huge for so many reasons one it just is like 11 11 is such a cool room to be in two 11 11 is my thing like I'm always seeing 11 11 I'm always wishing on 11 11 It's like it's part of me.

1:51:44It's very lucky. So I go through this whole trip and it's like, wow, this is so, so cool. And then the day on the before I left, I was like looking at the tassel and it has engraved in it 1111. And I was like, oh, my I need this. Like, I have to have it. But I also knew, well, fuck, if I take it, is it going to have the opposite effect? It's there for luck. But if I steal it, like, am I going to be cursed? Yeah, I mean, yes, is the answer to that. But also, I knew they would say no if I asked. Like, I was like, they're going to say no. I know people who've asked. And it's like, you can't. You can't have it.

1:52:28And they won't tell you who makes them? I don't. Because why don't you just have one made? No, that's not lucky to have it made. It's like, you got this. And like, that's the luck. you know you can't manufacture luck so i was in a huge moral dilemma i asked a bunch of people their thoughts on this this is a recurring you recognize this is recurring you wanted to steal the mugs sure you want to steal everything from places no i don't no i don't i want to have you want to steal plates you want to steal a candle holder once and i tried to find it for you wait You want to steal it. You wanted to steal this candle holder.

1:53:11And I found one before you don't remember is like a kind of I don't remember that you wanted to steal from like an English restaurant. Yeah, that sounds so cute. Yeah, I it's not that I want to steal things. Hence the dilemma. I want the thing. And yeah, I don't want to steal it. I want them to give it to me. um I want permission like I want think of that was your defense when you got in trouble for stealing a car and you said in cry well what I wanted was them for to give it to me I didn't want to steal it listen normally I I ask I'm like how can I have this tell me how I can have it and then when they say you can't that's when the stealing starts to come into play right but But I really haven't I didn't steal those mugs.

1:54:04Remember, I wanted to, but I didn't do it. I wanted to steal the candle from the restaurant and I didn't do it. Like I normally have the instinct and then I don't see it through. This was this was the height, though, because I was like, I have to have this. Like, there's no option for me not to. What did you do? What do you think I did? I want you to guess. I think you turned it in. Rob? I think you returned it, too. Okay. I took it.

1:54:41Oh, wow. I didn't see that coming. Hold on. I did it. I did it properly. I went to the front and I said, I know you're going to say no, but I'm in a very lucky room and I really want the tassel, is there a way for me to have it? They said what? They said they laughed and they said the tassel. Yeah. So if it is taken, we charge you$60. She said if it is taken, there's a blank charge. I'm not going to say the amount. So they said, so there is a way to take it. Okay. And then another person next to her laughed. So that was permission to me. That was permission granted. Yeah, that was somewhere in between begging for forgiveness and asking permission.

1:55:33That's like in the middle somehow. Yeah, because I knew. You threaded the needle. Yeah, because technically I know what they're supposed to say is like, no, you can't take it. Right. And I knew that. So I had no time to be replacing all these. Like if all the guests want their keys, they need a whole new department now. Right. That's just replacing the keys every day. Right. but also I'm a little bummed you took it because as you're telling the story I'm like okay great I'm gonna ask AI who makes these keys hopefully they can find out your birthday's around the corner finally I have something to get you for your birthday and now I don't yeah so I'm like happy for you and resent I resent you I understand I think that's how a lot of people feel about me it's definitely good luck and I feel good I feel like it was definitely permission granted and I paid for it.

1:56:20I assume. I assume I got charged. And great. And you love it. Have you looked at it and held it since you got home? Or did you move on to the next? No, I love it. Do you ever like rub it on your neck, like tickle your neck with the tassels? Like, are you ever laying in bed and just kind of tickling yourself with the tassels? Oh, no. It's probably a little dirty for that. I don't think I'd put it on my face. Okay. Maybe your heels, like your tickle your feet. Oh, speaking of, tomorrow I'm going to get a medical pedicure. What on earth does that mean? It's like at a podiatrist, they're going to give me like a real pedicure.

1:56:54They're going to make my feet look good again for Eric. Oh, okay. Like dig out like ingrown nails and stuff. Everything. They're going to make them babyish again. Well, I hope they don't make it literally a baby toe like I have. I just had to go through that whole thing with our guests because my feet were exposed a lot. And I had this hunch that they were dying to know why I had a baby toe on one foot. Right. And to be for people who forget you like your middle toe is a baby toe and it sticks up a little bit and it's tiny. It's super tiny. And then the second toe has is a comb over. It's it's completely curved to the side.

1:57:34It's confusing for them when they see it at this stage because like, wait, he made he shortened that one in half and then turned your other toe to the right. I'm like, no, no, that happened on its own. Yeah. And it's probably getting worse. And then Blake said, oh, he's trying to protect that little child. That's what I was thinking. No, I think it's more of a stability issue. But he saw it as him like, oh, gosh, tiny. Let's protect him. The little piggy, the runt piggy needs protection. Yes, yes. I think that's also what it is. It's a mess. What a mess. Yeah. All right. Should we do some facts?

1:58:08Yes, ma 'am. Okay. All right. Okay, yeah, let's do some fackies. Chris and David are cartel guys. What an episode. What a couple of fun-loving guys. They were so fun. And what a story. I love when we have people on who have all these really crazy stories to tell. That have been in movies, basically. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Like our FBI. Exactly. Yeah. Scott Payne. Yes, in the outlaw basement. Yeah, so good. All right. Couple facts. How many companies make challenge coins? Wait, really quick. I know it was probably stated in the episode, but the notion of sending those two guys to blend in in Columbia is really fucking funny.

1:58:55They couldn't have picked two more standout-y guys. I agree. Yeah. Okay, there are many companies that do this now and can custom make them for the general customer too. So it's not just one company. Lots of companies do these. Okay, great. Air Force recruiting stats after Top Gun movies. Oh, good. I was just going on about this the other night again without the numbers. A statistic often repeated without attribution is that the 1986 Top Gun films led to a 500 % increase in naval recruiting. But that figure has been debunked numerous times. Following the original Top Gun, there was a bump in recruiting, but it was much more modest, 8%.

1:59:38according to a recent fact check from the Australian Associated Press. But the C-Service... The Australian, how would they have our info? They're really good at it. But the C-Service also began advertising two years prior to the original Top Gun, $13.3 million in 1984 and$19.9 million in 1985. So it's unreliable how much the movie was responsible for the uptick in recruiting versus advertising. I got to stop saying that then. Did Maverick have any impact? Oh, I don't know. Because Maverick was huge. Oh, this says, yeah. Will Top Gun Maverick boost Navy recruiting? History says probably not. Yeah, I've been repeating that.

2:00:16I've been overseas and had generals tell me that. You should have told them they're fucking wrong. Who was the Indy 500 racer who funded his career by smuggling marijuana? I love this guy. Richard Lanier. Guys, watch this. It's part of the Bad Sports series on Netflix, which is a great sports doc series. 1986 Indy 500 Rookie of the Year was secretly funded by marijuana smuggling operations. He started running small loads of weed via speedboats and barges from the Bahamas, but later started shipments weighing over 100 ,000 pounds hidden under legit cargo. It's expected around 600 ,000 pounds were transported in total.

2:01:01He was indicted in 1988 for distributing over 1 ,000 pounds of marijuana under the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Act. He received a life sentence without parole, which was later commuted. Yeah, it says commuted. Oh, it does? I thought it was communed. It's commuted? I don't know any of these words. Yeah, maybe it is commuted. To 27 years behind bars, they found$2 million in cash buried in his father's lawn inside PVC pipes, which his dad was also sentenced for. He's such a good time, Charlie. that guy. He's the most likable criminal I've ever seen. And he was fucking hell of a driver. Yeah. It sucks.

2:01:39Why didn't he just do that? Because he can't make any money doing that. Like 0.0001 % of people in racing make money. Yeah, that sucks. Okay, I get why he did it. Yeah, he had to. How many Colombians lost their lives fighting cartels or were victims of cartels? It is estimated that the Medellin cartel was responsible for over 4 ,000 Colombian deaths, including authority figures like police officers, judges, and the presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galán. Okay. Okay. What is the Onion Field cop-killing movie mentioned? The Onion Field, 1979 movie directed by Harold Becker, starred John Savage, James Wood, Franklin Seals, and Ted Danson, his feature film debut.

2:02:27Oh. Oh, Papa Ted. This movie centered around. Friend. This movie centered around two LAPD officers who were kidnapped by ex-convicts who feared returning to prison. One was murdered. Ted Danson, spoiler. Oh, no. In an onion field while the other escaped. An onion field to me is a seahorse to you. I can't picture what that is at all. I'm picturing, you know, when you let an onion live too long in your cupboard and it sprouts an enormous green thing. Yeah. That's what I'm picturing, but I have no basis for that other than my cupboard. That's probably right. Okay. What is the average THC level in weed today versus back then?

2:03:07Reports list modern day cannabis to have significantly higher THC levels than in prior decades. According to the Cannabis Museum of Amsterdam, average THC levels were 1.1 to 3 % in the 70s, 3 to 5 % in 80s, 5 to 10 in 90s, 10 to 15 in 2000s, and 15 to 20 % since 2020. This is validated by a University of Mississippi study, the National Library of Medicine, and other studies. I mean, on one hand, you could look at that as a negative. But on another hand, you could go, well, people were always going to get high. So should they have to smoke a ton of carcinogens to get the THC, or is it better if they're smoking less?

2:03:47Yeah. I don't know. I'll tell you this, though. The recruitment went through the roof after the first Top Gun. That I do know. Oh, boy. Okay.

2:03:59Okay. How long does it take to manufacture a plant-based drug versus a synthetic, and what are the profit margins? That's a really in-depth question you've asked. Thank you. I'm so upset. This is such a good fact check. I didn't do this. Oh, you didn't? No, because I would have to be getting so far ahead to get this, but I knew this was the opportunity for us. So I had Sophia, our incredible intern, listen for facts on Double Speed, and she did this. Oh, wow. And it is so much better than anything I do. And it is very, it's humbling. My facts are more like. Playful. Yeah. Okay, how long did I - That is really fun.

2:04:50That's really funny that it just was revealed. I mean, I've been thinking it this whole time. She sent me like such an intense - Oh my God, Sophia. Really, really good. Really good job. But is she checking like, is my dad the sim lord? Like, no. Is she exploring whether or not she has acne or not? No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She doesn't. There's pros and cons. No, she doesn't. She does not. The indoor cannabis life cycle from germination to flowering can take anywhere from six to 20 weeks. Different sources say different things. Then the drying, curing, testing, packaging, and distribution processes can take anywhere from a week to four to five weeks.

2:05:28Outdoor growth can take up to six months. Synthetic drugs, chemical synthesis takes a few days. Purification, testing, packaging, and distribution can take anywhere from a few days to two weeks depending on level of quality assurance and testing. This is an extremely high potency program for many synthetic drugs, making it very scalable. Cocaine's kind of a hybrid of that. You've got to grow the coca, but then you have to process it chemically. And you know, that's what's wild. Have you ever seen that? Mm-mm. They put in some kind of petroleum, like a turpentine or something, all over all the leaves.

2:06:04And they have people, so when you're starting cocaine, you're getting some of their feet in your nose. They stomp on it like the grapes. Like the grapes? Yes, and they're walking around all day long. and they get sores on their feet. But they're absorbing cocaine. Oh, they love it. So they don't mind at all. Did you think about putting some cocaine on your farm uncle? I didn't because I know I couldn't be trusted to apply it to my carb uncle. I've always said this, like, I don't even, I don't think about drinking Tettle. I'll be at a bar. I don't even know, you know. Yeah. I don't. You don't care.

2:06:41I don't care. I've not seen a couple grams of cocaine laid on a table in 21 years, and I'm very glad I haven't. Well, I'm glad that you're aware of that. Yeah, yeah. Okay. The legal cannabis market has a gross profit margin of around 45 to 55 percent. Dispensaries typically earning net profit margins of around 15 to 21 percent in modern day. What year did they legalize big pharma marketing directly to the consumer? 1985 was said in the interview. In the early 80s, pharma companies started exploring TV ads aimed at consumers. In 83, the FDA imposed a moratorium on DTC, direct-to-consumer ads, to study the implications.

2:07:18In 1985, the FDA lifted the moratorium given they comply with advertising rules, which were in line with rules put on positions at that time. Okay, so 85 is right. But then in 97 saw another policy change that loosened the guidelines. This is a tricky one. Yep. Because if you are poor and you have no insurance and you don't go to the doctor and you have a condition, how are you to learn there is an immune suppressant that could fix it? How are you to learn? So in that way, if you at least go like, oh, there's a solution to this. Now it's worth me going to pay the doctor to get the solution. That's great.

2:07:57Yep. But also advertising works. Yep. And we are so over medicated. It's insane. Yep. I agree. It is complicated. Tradeoffs. Tradeoffs. That's all trade-offs. This is what I think about nonstop. Trade-offs. That's my new obsession, trade-offs. Yeah, it's - There's no such thing as wins. There's just trade-offs. We've had guests say that, but I really have internalized that now. Now you're taking it on. Yeah. Okay. What is the difference between carfentanil - Fungles. Carbuncles. Carfentanil and normal fentanyl. Yeah. Okay. Fentanil is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. It drives 70 % of opioid overdoses deaths in the U.S.

2:08:35as of 2023. Carfentanil is 10 ,000 times stronger than morphine. No. Making it 100 times more potent than fentanyl. Oh, my. Do you have a micron of it in your... Carfentanil is not approved for human use. It is a veterinary tranquilizer for animals like elephants. A lethal dose of fentanyl is around 2 milligrams, while carfentanil can be as low as 0.02 milligrams. Ew. Ew, it can cause an overdose through skin or airborne exposure. Well, sure, those patches, fentanyl patches. Biggest organ of the body, the skin. The human skin. I did that fact. That was me, not Sophia. She would never do that. She wouldn't know about skin.

2:09:23She wouldn't know. She doesn't have acne. She doesn't have acne. That's it. That was great. Yeah. Good job, Sophia. Good job, Sophia. That's great. All right. Love you. Love you.

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