Original subtitles

(vehicle running)

(men speaking Spanish)

(motor starts)

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(thud)

(men speaking Spanish)

(dog groans)

♪ ♪

(dog groans)

♪ ♪

MAN: Shake this square world and blast off for Kicksville.

RICHARD NIXON: Public enemy number one is drug abuse.

NANCY REAGAN: Just say no.

RONALD REAGAN: Halting the drug problem in America

is like carrying water in a sieve.

GEORGE H. W. BUSH: Take my word for it, this scourge will stop!

KAMALA HARRIS: There's now an understanding

that the war on drugs was an abject failure.

MAN: You have to stop and ask yourself, how did we get here?

DONALD TRUMP: We will build a wall.

♪ ♪

GEORGE JUNG: I grew up in a town like Happy Days.

There weren't any drugs, no guns, no violence.

And when I went out to California,

my intention was to go to Long Beach State College

and complete my degree in marketing.

Suddenly, everybody was smoking marijuana.

And I saw the value in selling the marijuana,

more than getting high off of it.

My name is George Jacob Jung, spelled J‐U‐N‐G, okay?

And what I'm known for

is being one of the major drug smugglers

in the world.

♪ ♪

The money was just rolling in,

and you know, of course it was tax free. (laughs)

But I became bored with that, as a matter of fact.

I wanted more, I wanted more thrill, more adventure.

So I convinced my college buddies to get involved.

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

♪ ♪

We went to a place called Puerto Vallarta.

And couldn't speak Spanish,

and after five days we couldn't even find a joint.

My ego was kind of struck down to zero.

And a little yellow Volkswagen pulled up out front of the bar,

and this little blonde girl got out,

and she came right to our table.

She said, "You know, I've been watching you guys

for like five days."

She said, "You've asked everybody in Puerto Vallarta

for marijuana except the police chief."

She said, "You need help."

I said, "Yes, I do."

And she said, "I live with a guy

who can give you all the marijuana you want."

And I said, "Let's go!"

We went over to meet him, and he said,

"How are you gonna get it out of here?"

And I said, "Fly it."

He said, "Do you have a plane?"

And I lied and I said, "Yes, I do."

I said, "I can get one and I'll be back with it."

So then it was time to learn how to fly.

♪ ♪

I did this trip in a certain amount of time,

and I was making a ton of money.

But they finally caught up with me.

I was looking at five years in the federal system.

The judge was about to sentence me,

and I got up and I said,

"It's ludicrous that I should be sentenced

for taking a plant across an imaginary line."

(laughs)

And he said, "That may be true, Mr. Jung,"

he said, "Unfortunately it's against the law."

And so I got the five years.

♪ ♪

(thunder)

♪ ♪

MICHAEL CORLEONE BLANCO: My mother grew up

in this part of town,

which was the only place that you could actually smoke reefer,

you know, have a couple drinks,

bet a little on numbers, watch rooster fights,

and maybe go and have a good time with a prostitute.

I'm talking about 1950s.

There was still muddy streets, horse‐drawn carriages.

My name is Michael Corleone Blanco.

I'm the youngest surviving son of one Griselda Blanco.

Also known as the Queen of Cocaine.

She told me that she remembered being so poor,

she didn't have no shoes or sandals.

And my mother said to herself, the day I have children

I'm gonna make sure they live in the lap of luxury.

The neighborhood was divided

between these two local street gangs,

and she started to date a kid

from the other part of the neighborhood, Pestañitas.

Pestañitas ran bootlegging, he ran a couple prostitutes,

sold some weed, and he met this little girl.

She was 14 when she fell in love with him.

They got married, and he introduced her to marijuana.

They'd been drug dealing together, right.

They were getting money, but Pestañitas told my mother,

"We're making peanuts here.

If we can get this weed to New York,

we could make a big load of money."

(horns honking)

(siren)

So they relocate to New York,

and they start doing deals in New York.

When they start making serious money,

my mother goes back to Colombia

and she meets a gentleman who was a club owner,

and the gentleman tells her,

"You might wanna think about this drug called cocaine."

REPORTER: This is Jackson Heights

in the borough of Queens.

It's one of the places where cocaine

comes home to the United States.

MAN: This has become the central distribution point

for the majority of all the cocaine

distributed in the northern United States.

If you just stand here and watch these people,

that's exactly what they're doing right now,

is they're doing business.

BLANCO: In the early '70s,

Griselda becomes the queen of Queens,

Queens, New York.

She's selling cocaine.

My mother realizes that this is the future.

♪ ♪

(sniffing)

BOB PALOMBO: Cocaine was on the rise,

the demand was starting to increase.

At JFK Airport, the seizures were from a pound or so,

or two pounds on the body,

to two or three kilos in the suitcases.

We were starting to see other methods,

anything that could conceal cocaine,

was starting to make its way in more frequently.

And Griselda Blanco's fingerprint was on that.

♪ ♪

JUNG: I was sentenced to Danbury Federal Correctional Institute,

and that was how I met the infamous Carlos Lehder.

Carlos was there for stealing cars

and shipping them illegally to Colombia.

I said, "Well, basically you're a car thief."

And he said, "What about you?"

And I said, "I flew planeloads of pot out of Mexico."

He said, "Do you know anything about cocaine?"

I didn't.

He said, "You can buy it

for $3,000 to $4,000 a kilo in Colombia."

And I said, "Well, how much does it sell for

in the United States?"

And he said, "$60,000 a kilo."

And I said, "You know what, Carlos?

I think you and I are gonna go into business together."

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

BLANCO: Griselda entrepreneured the cocaine industry

as we know it.

From the jungle, to the street corner,

to the nightclub, to your household.

My mother did that.

♪ ♪

Where's the first place people are gonna buy drugs at?

On the corner.

What's the second place people are gonna do and sell drugs at?

The disco.

It's the epitome and the era of disco music.

♪ ♪

REPORTER: It's 3:00 in the morning in Manhattan,

and still at Studio 54,

people crowd the doors hoping to get in.

BLANCO: My mother liked to rub elbows

with the elite of the time.

REPORTER: Society columnists adore Studio 54,

for the personalities it attracts.

BLANCO: Studio 54, she practically owned the joint.

JUNG: Studio 54 was lined up for blocks.

Everybody's snorting cocaine in there.

It was Saturday Night Fever with señorita cocaine.

♪ Here comes paradise ♪

♪ Mmm ♪

It took over America for the rich and famous.

♪ Nice ♪

(sirens)

REPORTER: The number of people snorting cocaine

is rising steadily, despite the steep price.

About $100 for a gram,

enough for several people to get high at one party.

♪ ♪

REPORTER: Cocaine paraphernalia is selling well

right on Madison Avenue.

REPORTER: Who is buying this?

MAN: Everyone.

From the secretary, lawyers, businessmen, old and young.

We have customers in the entertainment business,

but most of them are executives.

♪ ♪

PETER BOURNE: Well, it's not a serious problem nationwide,

given the very large number of people who use cocaine.

It is a serious problem for a certain small minority,

and those tend to be people who are very wealthy,

for whom money is no concern,

who can get unlimited access to cocaine.

(sirens)

PALOMBO: Cocaine, at that point,

really wasn't in law enforcement's radar.

And so there was a gap in the intelligence

that was being developed,

and this gave the Colombians an opportunity to establish

a greater foothold for smuggling the drugs into the country

and distributing the drugs without being caught.

♪ ♪

BLANCO: My mother makes a fortune in New York City

and moves back to Colombia.

And her and El Capitán see that their empire's grown so much

that they need henchmen, they need soldiers.

And everybody knew

that if you wanted to get into the cocaine business,

you had to get the green light from Griselda.

♪ ♪

Pablo Escobar's boss was one of those smugglers.

My mother didn't like him too much, so Pablo killed him.

And my mother said, "Pablo, you've got a future, kid."

♪ ♪

PALOMBO: It wasn't until later

that I realized what a role she played,

not only in the cocaine business,

but also in the business of violence.

She was psychopath.

She loved killing people.

(camera shutter clicking)

JUNG: In the beginning, I really liked him,

he was young and well‐mannered and educated.

He had an innocence about him, also.

MÓNICA LEHDER: I would describe my father

as a rebel, adventurous man.

He was a chilled person, he loved his music,

he loved to be around friends,

peaceful, sometimes introverted, too.

JUNG: I figured a great guy to meet and to work with,

and we can make a lot of money together.

♪ ♪

And the next thing I knew, we were on our way down to Colombia

to meet a guy named Pablo Escobar.

A lot of people asked me was I in awe or whatever.

I mean, he could have been a vacuum cleaner salesman;

I didn't know who the hell he was.

♪ ♪

(engine revving)

We talked and he said, "I have one rule:

You betray me and I'll have to kill you."

And I said, "Well, you'll never get to kill me,

'cause I'll never betray you."

I mean, it's a simple rule, right? (laughs)

You know, people walking around the ranch

all with machine guns and this and that.

That wasn't my trip.

I mean, I just wanted to get in and get the hell out of there.

(engine starts)

♪ ♪

(cha‐ching)

JEREMY McDERMOTT: Pablo Escobar industrializes

the cocaine trade.

He gathers a big group of different traffickers

based in the city of Medellín.

And they begin to pool their shipments and work together.

And then Carlos Lehder brings

the mass transport element via planes.

He provides the air bridge.

Then there's the retailers,

the Griselda Blancos,

others in the U. S.,

they are running the distributions networks,

and then funneling back the money to the cartel.

♪ ♪

TOM CASH: Carlos Lehder is to the cocaine smuggling business,

what the Wright brothers were to aviation.

ANDY: When I first met Carlos,

it was simply to purchase some airplanes for him.

I never used my real name; I went by an alias.

He got a hold of me and said,

"Hey, I got this place in the Bahamas.

That's where we're gonna operate out of,

and I need some airplanes."

So I picked up a couple airplanes for him

and flew them to Bahamas.

And Carlos said, "Hey, you want to fly down to Colombia,

fill 'em up and bring 'em back to the islands,

and make a little extra money?"

And so I said, "Yeah, okay."

Carlos was very convincing.

You know, the smile on his face and how great it is.

So, consequently,

you kind of insidiously get involved in this.

I mean, I had no desire to be a criminal,

I had no desire to go to jail.

REPORTER: One of the most favored routes

from Colombia to Miami is via the Bahamas,

famous for its beaches, casinos,

and hundreds of thinly inhabited

cays or islands

that have been used for smuggling for centuries.

ANDY: The flying was not nearly as dangerous

as hanging out there overnight in Colombia.

These little strips were out in the middle of nowhere.

I remember sleeping in a hammock with a .38 on my chest,

because there were some people that would come in

with automatic weapons and steal the product.

If you messed up, you weren't getting out.

If you, as others did, crash an airplane

at some of these clandestine strips in Colombia,

and you were injured, the narcos buried you with the airplane.

They didn't take you to hospital.

So there was a great incentive

to successfully land and take off.

JUNG: There's an old saying that the marijuana business

was done with a handshake,

and the cocaine business was done with a gun.

I mean, people walking around with guns,

and everybody had one.

It was very serious, and mistakes weren't tolerated.

♪ ♪

(boat approaching)

REPORTER: In the drugs business,

all roads lead to Miami, Florida,

America's biggest banking center outside New York.

REPORTER: Cocaine dealers regularly pay cash

for a $50,000 car, a $100,000 yacht,

or a $1 million condominium.

AL SINGLETON: One of the side‐effects

of the cocaine trade was the impact it had on the economy,

and the amount of cash that was free‐flowing.

♪ ♪

JIM SHEDD: The money that was coming into Miami

was just incredible.

I remember we would have to go to the Federal Reserve Bank,

and there were just pallets and pallets and pallets of cash.

Many times the Federal Reserve Bank of Miami

had more cash than all the other Federal Reserve Banks

put together.

(plane approaching)

♪ ♪

SINGLETON: He purchased Norman's Cay

for what I was told at the time was $2 million,

so Carlos had actually purchased the island.

JUNG: And he wanted to build like an empire there,

drug smuggling empire.

REPORTER: Using a front company,

he acquired most of the property on the island,

and turned it into a drug transshipment port.

JUNG: It was full of naked women

and parties and cocaine everywhere.

Armed bodyguards walking around the perimeters

with machine guns, which he imported from Germany.

ANDY: Norman's Cay was approximately 200‐plus miles

from the east coast of Florida.

So it was a very easy trip for a light airplane,

which would draw no suspicion whatsoever,

because a light airplane didn't have the range

to go anywhere where this merchandise was picked up.

JUNG: In the beginning it was all fine.

Then Carlos changed drastically, he did like a 180.

And I told him, I said, "This is crazy.

The only way to do this is to keep on the move

and keep changing locations, where nobody knows who you are,

or what you are, and you keep moving."

And I said, "Everybody in the world's

gonna be watching that island."

And they were.

It was a madness.

And that's when I decided it was time to go.

♪ ♪

Anybody who thinks they're a drug lord,

they're living some kind of foolish, childish dream.

Once you get on the list, it's over.

(wings flapping)

♪ ♪

(gunshot)

♪ ♪

(man speaking Spanish)

(gunshot)

♪ ♪

BLANCO: The first sicario motorcycle hit,

it was done by Griselda's killers,

and they weren't young 15‐year‐old, 16‐year‐old boys;

they were grown bandidos.

It was a different time.

My mother never believed that a boy

should get involved in men's stuff.

♪ ♪

Griselda comes to Miami.

You have an industry that was trying to be established

by other Latinos.

But now this corporate entity came into town and said,

"No, no, no, this is my town,

I don't care what you guys think, I run all the cocaine."

My mother always told me, "You know what's the best way

to take care of your competition?

Erase your competition.

Then you have nobody to compete with."

(siren)

INVESTIGATOR: Right now two people are dead,

and there are others injured.

I don't know the exact amount.

REPORTER: Police say they don't know what the motive was

for the shootings, but they are sure it wasn't robbery.

SINGLETON: The shooting occurred in the middle of the day,

in a very popular shopping mall called Dadeland.

REPORTER: Inside the liquor store,

one Colombian national and another non‐Cuban Latin

suspected of drug trafficking lay face up in a pool of blood.

INVESTIGATOR: They were well armed, we can say that,

and they came prepared to do battle.

SINGLETON: The subjects went inside with automatic weapons,

killed the intended target and his bodyguard

inside the liquor store.

REPORTER: The shooting continued outside,

as the assailants sprayed gunfire

all around the parking lot.

Shell fragments were found some 40 yards from the store.

SINGLETON: They'd fired automatic weapons

into the sidewalk area,

wounding two other totally innocent bystanders.

Witnesses were just beside themselves.

They couldn't believe the fact

that they were minding their own business, shopping,

in a suburban shopping mall,

and ended up being shot at with machine guns.

It was totally unprecedented,

no one had ever seen anything like this before

on any homicide scene.

PALOMBO: This was the handiwork of Griselda Blanco.

She loved to make that statement,

and the bloody trail continued from that point on.

BLANCO: That day, 1979, I think

Miami and the United States understood that cocaine

would generate so much violence and so much financial gain,

that people were willing to kill people in broad daylight,

innocent or not innocent.

WOMAN: No! No!

REPORTER: Last week, the bodies of two Colombians were found.

REPORTER: The majority of murders here

are related to drug trafficking.

REPORTER: Colombian drug dealers have opened fire

in crowded shopping centers, along busy highways,

in quiet residential neighborhoods.

REPORTER: This Colombian was machine‐gunned

as he sat in his car.

IKE SEAMANS: 514 persons have been murdered

in Miami this year.

LLOYD HOUGH: There's no end to the selection of weapons

that they have here.

They're a lot better armed than law enforcement.

SINGLETON: We became known as Dodge City.

JOSEPH DAVIS: What I see going on here would make Chicago

in the days of Prohibition

look like a Baptist Sunday school picnic.

(train horn blows)

SINGLETON: The homicide rate doubled

from 300 a year to 600 a year.

We were all overwhelmed.

Not the least of which was the medical examiner's office

which had to use a refrigerated truck to store bodies.

PALOMBO: The primary target of Metro‐Dade Homicide

was Griselda Blanco.

She not only wanted the person shot,

but she wanted the person's wife and even the children shot.

She was a monster.

♪ ♪

(man speaking Spanish)

ANDY: Initially, he'd try a little bit of the product

occasionally, but it got to the point

where he was, I believe, addicted to it,

and I think that really distorted his perception

of what the operation was, and he became a different person.

He was very paranoid, he ran around with a .45,

waving it around,

and you never knew what the hell he was gonna do.

He just had this attitude that he was the king.

That's when I decided that this could get dangerous.

Maybe it's time to say sayonara to this activity.

REPORTER: Colombian drug baron Carlos Lehder

had armed guards

to prevent outsiders landing by boat or plane.

For yachtsmen, this island had a menacing reputation.

ANDY: Some time after I left,

one of the most famous news anchors in North America,

Walter Cronkite, sailed into the harbor at Norman's Cay

and was met by a couple of fellas

that were sporting AR‐15s.

And when he asked what the deal was,

they told him that he wasn't welcome on the island,

and he should just get in his little boat

and sail on out of the harbor.

Cronkite wasn't gonna be put off like that,

so he opened up his own little investigation,

and one thing led to another.

And eventually the Bahamian police

were convinced by the U. S. authorities,

DEA and what have you,

that you need to do something about this island down there.

♪ ♪

JUNG: Carlos became a Freudian kaleidoscope of madness,

because on one end of the spectrum,

he loved John Lennon,

and he loved Adolf Hitler!

And that was mind‐boggling to me.

♪ ♪

LEHDER: It was on the news, on the radio, on the streets.

We had the army coming to our house almost every day,

looking for him.

♪ ♪

PALOMBO: As she began to create more and more enemies,

she wasn't able to really enjoy the fruits of her endeavors

because she was on the run.

BLANCO: I would always wonder why

we had so many people with me.

And my brother would tell me, "You know why?" "Why?"

"'Cause you're the prince of this family,

and nothing's gonna happen to you."

♪ ♪

PALOMBO: Her husband, Darío Sepúlveda,

is growing weary of her, he's disgusted with her.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, right?

He's an assassin himself, and even she was too much for him.

He's worried about the well‐being of his son,

Michael Corleone, and he takes Michael and goes to Colombia.

Well, Griselda wasn't having any of that.

And a short time later, she pays off police in Colombia.

Darío's driving down the road with little Michael in the car.

(bell tolls)

BLANCO: And after a couple minutes,

four cops, two motorcycles pull us over.

And he handcuffs my father, and my father goes,

"What are you doing?"

And my father looks at his bodyguard,

and I think right then and there they realized it.

And I look at my daddy,

and I said, "Papi, papi!"

My dad was hit by 27 bullets.

I saw the holes on his back.

And there was all blood coming out of 'em.

I was about to be six years old.

PALOMBO: Griselda Blanco ordered the hit on her husband,

and there's no doubt in my mind that she didn't care

whether her son saw the assassination or not.

♪ ♪

All he knew was that he was whisked up, put on a plane,

and delivered to his mother in Irvine, California.

And shortly thereafter is when we arrest her.

♪ ♪

She was just propped up in bed reading the Bible.

She didn't have the .38 in her hand;

that was on her nightstand.

I said, "Hola, Griselda."

She looked at me with a very bewildered look.

"No. Me llamo Betty."

I said, "Nah, I don't think so."

And I put the cuffs on her, away we went.

The maid had taken little Michael down the street

to go play at a park.

We didn't want him in the house,

you know, it was gonna be too traumatic.

He was as cute as a button, playing at a playground,

just a nice kid.

And it was so sad, and I remember commenting to my wife,

I said, "You know, I really feel sorry for this child.

I wouldn't mind taking this kid and adopting him myself."

♪ ♪

SEBASTIÁN MARROQUÍN: I only had the opportunity

to meet Carlos Lehder for one or two weeks

in the Hacienda Nápoles.

They became very close friends;

they were both against the extradition.

LEHDER: They were very close,

but they always kept their families away from everything.

MARROQUÍN: Sadly Carlos Lehder lose all of his money and power,

and he was consuming a lot of drugs.

REPORTER: Colombian law enforcement officers

have not said exactly how police were led

to Lehder's house in Medellín,

but that Lehder was set up by one of his alleged partners

in the cocaine cartel, Pablo Escobar.

McDERMOTT: The story is that there was a big party

at Pablo Escobar's hacienda, and Carlos Lehder arrived coked up.

And one of Escobar's sicarios makes a pass

at one of the girls he was with, and Lehder just kills him.

And so Escobar has to smooth all this over.

But elements of the Medellín Cartel

then see Carlos Lehder as a liability.

STEVEN COHEN: Escobar sees the need to appease

U.S. and Colombian officials who are applying increasing pressure

on him and his organization.

And Lehder gets offered up as the sacrificial lamb,

and essentially turned over

by Escobar and Medellín Cartel associates.

LEHDER: I remember the day of my father's arrest.

I was with my mother,

and I can still feel how her face turned white,

and the screams.

♪ ♪

(helicopter)

REPORTER: The plane from Colombia

carrying reputed drug king Carlos Lehder

touched down in Florida early this morning.

Security was heavy; gun‐toting federal agents

circled the courthouse in Tampa where he was taken.

Justice Department officials describe Lehder

as one of the most violent drug dealers ever captured.

♪ ♪

JUNG: I was looking at more than 20 years in prison, straight up.

The judge said, "When you were young, you had $100 million."

And he said, "Nobody knew who you were.

Why didn't you just take it and go away?"

And I had an answer, because I had figured it out a while back,

that it wasn't the money anymore.

My father knew what was going on for years,

and he said, "You're a thrill junkie!"

He said, "Why don't you become a race car driver

or something like that?"

(chuckles)

♪ ♪

Escobar sent my wife to visit me,

and she said, "He wants you to testify."

And I said, "I won't."

She had my daughter, who was, I don't know, four years old,

with her, and she looked at me and she said,

"This time he's not asking."

♪ ♪

LEHDER: I was six years old when we needed to go hide,

because Escobar was looking for me.

He knew the love that my father had for me,

and the perfect way to silence him

is to threaten his little girl when his trial started.

You can't even imagine that it's possible,

but they say that at war, everything goes.

♪ ♪

REPORTER: It is one of the biggest victories

in U. S. history for drug agents and federal prosecutors.

Now that he's been convicted,

Lehder faces a life prison sentence,

plus 150 years on top of that.

LEHDER: They saw him as a trophy, I say.

He wrote his first letter,

and he promised me that he would be home by Christmas.

And now it's been 33 Christmas waiting for him.

♪ ♪

BLANCO: When you've done so much bad in your life,

that type of beef never goes away.

That type of generational hatred, revenge,

it don't go away.

So after eight years of my mother's release,

she was killed.

♪ ♪

TOM BROKAW: You have some exclusive details for us, Brian.

BRIAN ROSS: Tom, Pablo Escobar is, without a doubt,

the most powerful and ruthless of all the drug bosses.

REPORTER: It's believed that his cocaine empire

has made Escobar one of the world's richest men.

REPORTER: Worth estimated at $3 billion.

REPORTER: Escobar's ranch is a monument to his illegal trade.

The plane over the gate is the first

he used to transport illegal drugs.

REPORTER: Those who would challenge Pablo at his own game,

learned he would do anything to win.

Cocaine bought these 10,000 acres

of mansions and guest houses.

Quite a haul for a man who began his career

stealing gravestones and cars and working as a golf caddy.

Captioned by Side Door Media Services