Original subtitles

♪ ♪

REPORTER (over TV): Shake this square world and blast off to Kicksville.

NIXON: Public Enemy Number One is drug abuse.

NANCY: Just say, "No."

REAGAN: Halting the drug problem in America is like

carrying water in a sieve.

BUSH: Take my word for it, this scourge will stop!

REPORTER 2 (over TV): It's now an understanding that the

war on drugs was an abject failure.

REPORTER 3 (over TV): You have to stop and ask yourself,

how did we get here?

TRUMP: We will build a wall.

WOMAN: Woo!

(crowd cheering)

REPORTER (over TV): The opening of the biggest

sporting event on Earth.

It's called "World Cup Soccer."

TOFT: When Escobar was finally killed,

the members of the Task Force started yelling,

"Viva Colombia!"

CROWD: Colombia! Colombia! Colombia! Colombia!

TOFT: It was a celebratory cry that

probably all Colombia heard.

TOFT: 1994 was an election year in Colombia.

The leading candidate for the presidency,

to succeed President Gaviria was Ernesto Samper,

who had been a Senator of Colombia for a long time,

and he was in the same party as President Gaviria.

TOFT: Suddenly a member of the opponent of Samper

showed up at the Embassy.

MAN (over tape): Hello!

(speaking in native language).

TOFT: And gave the Ambassador a tape.

MAN: Mhm.

TOFT: It contained a conversation between a

cartel member and a campaign manager of Samper,

addressing monies for the campaign.

MAN: Mhm.

TOFT: We had this evidence that a cartel was basically

interfering with an election.

To me, this was the smoking gun.

♪ ♪

SHEDD: Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and

Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela were the heads of a cartel that was

totally different than the other cartels.

They looked at it more as a business to expand,

and they were involved in the cost versus profit.

You have to learn who your enemy is,

otherwise, you're not gonna win the fight.

And I studied over a long period of time the

Rodríguez Orejuelas, and they were very smart,

strategic thinkers, who were always one step

ahead of the game.

REPORTER (over TV): Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez have a

piece of several hotels, and ow Cali's largest shopping center.

REPORTER (over TV): And they own Cali's main passion,

the soccer team, América.

SHEDD: So, they were to be respected.

Yes, they were dopers and traffickers,

but you cannot underestimate 'em.

You underestimate people of that caliber,

you're doomed.

REPORTER (over TV): Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez

are forcing modern business methods on a violent trade.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): The cartel forced its employees to

fill out this application form.

Cartel hopefuls had to enter the names and addresses of

their entire family.

SHEDD: They had to know who your family members were,

where were they, what did they own, didn't own,

cars, planes, automobiles, trains, anything.

They had to know all about you before you were

trusted into the system.

REPORTER (over TV): To handle the ever‐larger shipments of

cocaine heading to the United States,

the cartel used container ships,

sometimes even loading up entire passenger jets.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): It is a marriage of convenience

between Colombia's Cali Cartel and the Italian Mafia.

When the Cold War ended, a new war began.

TRANSLATOR: The problem of cocaine in Russia began only

one or two years ago.

Cocaine is a new problem for us.

REPORTER (over TV): From Moscow to Madrid.

From Rome to Tokyo.

The Cali Cartel is creating new markets.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): In raw profit, it now

outstrips Boeing, Texaco and Pepsi.

SHEDD: They were planning to eventually

become the Kennedys of Colombia.

TOFT: We took this to President Gaviria,

and Gaviria said he was gonna take care of it

and nothing happened.

(crowd cheering).

TOFT: I was so disgusted with the fact that the Cali Cartel

had played such an important role.

But I did a lotta soul searching,

and I couldn't say what I was gonna say if

I stayed in the DEA.

I really wanted to tell what was happening in Colombia and

make the record straight.

I decided to share the cassette with a news anchor woman,

and just before I left Colombia,

I gave an interview with people that I had trusted in

the media in Colombia.

I created a huge international event, I guess.

REPORTER (over TV): President Samper denies

receiving drug money, and Colombian prosecutors

cleared him of any wrongdoing.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): Colombian President, Ernesto Samper,

was on his way to New York to address the

United Nations on a global anti‐drug strategy.

His plane was grounded after authorities found more than

seven pounds of heroin hidden on board.

Colombia's Justice Minister says someone planted the drugs

in order to embarrass the President.

SAMPER (over TV): For me, this is not a very common case.

It was a drug.

I was supposed to go to the United States,

and I hope that intelligence agencies could find not only

who put the drug, but why he put.

MAN: Viva Samper!

CALDERÓN: The consequence of the narco cassette scandal was

that President Samper was cornered, so he had

to go after the Cali Cartel.

He had to go against those that financed him.

SALAMEH: In 1994 and 1995, Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela

were the biggest criminals in the world.

And we were going after 'em.

(speaking in native language).

(speaking in native language).

(speaking in native language).

♪ ♪

REPORTER (over TV): NBC News has learned that the Cali Carte

is even building its own fleet of submarines,

like this one seized off the coast of Colombia.

They're designed to carry cocaine

from Colombia to Puerto Rico.

Once there, drugs can come into the US with no customs check.

(speaking in native language).

SALAMEH: The Cali Cartel had

brought the Presidential campaign.

FEISTL: President Samper had to show that,

"Hey, this isn't true. This information isn't true."

SALAMEH: You could sense the tide was turning,

and it was turning towards Cali.

FEISTL: Main focus of the Colombian Government,

as well as the United States Government,

was to go after now the biggest threat,

the Cali Cartel.

SALAMEH: It's the obvious move for guys like us.

♪ ♪

My name is Jerry Salameh, I'm a retired DEA Agent.

I served for 28 years with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

♪ ♪

FEISTL: My name is Chris Feistl.

I worked for the DEA for 26 years,

including 12 years in Colombia, South America.

(distant sirens)

The first impression I have of working in Cali is it's a city

of spies, that everywhere you go,

people are looking at you.

Once you step foot in Cali, the cartel knew you were there.

They knew what you were up to.

SALAMEH: They used to call it the "Cali KGB."

They had people inside the phone company.

I mean, they pretty much owned the phone company.

All the taxi drivers were on the payroll,

reporting everything they observed.

FEISTL: They were able to penetrate Government of Colombia

security institutions, the military, the police.

SALAMEH: There were allegations of tremendous corruption.

I mean, we knew the tentacles that Cali brought.

(speaking in native language).

REPORTER (over TV): Under U. S. pressure,

General Rosso Serrano is named Police Chief.

In Colombia, he is the DEA's most trusted ally.

♪ ♪

SALAMEH: Low and behold we developed a source that was

able to give us a lead, so with that lead,

we assembled our team.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

SALAMEH: We knew where the guy lived.

The guy went by "El Flaco," the "Skinny Guy."

SALAMEH: He would leave his apartment early in the morning

and make his way to wherever Gilberto was staying.

(speaking in native language).

SALAMEH: He would jump in a cab,

get out of a cab, jump in a public bus.

He would walk.

He'd dip into a building, come out of another door

of the building.

If we lost him in two minutes, we'd have to go back to our

safe house and wait another 24 hours to try to

do it all over again.

We did that for a week.

And I'll never forget, we had two female officers

on that team.

They were part of our surveillance team.

There was this big staircase that went up to this

residential area on top o' this little bit of a hill,

and people would exercise, going up and down those stairs.

The women, they would dress in gym clothes and go down there

and workout and so forth.

SALAMEH: Well, the last day, they followed him all the way

up on the top o' that hill.

SALAMEH: And we were able to isolate that area,

and that's the area that we raided.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

SISSONS (over TV): President Clinton has hailed

the arrest in Colombia of one of the worlds most

wanted drug traffickers, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela.

(crowd chatter)

SALAMEH: It was a big get to get Gilberto,

you know, the chess player, one of the biggest criminals

in the world.

And I can only imagine how Miguel felt after that,

'cause he knew the game was on.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(radio chatter)

FEISTL: In July of 1995 we were able to speak with

an individual, and he agreed to meet with us,

but he wanted to meet in a very remote area outside of Cali.

He is the head of security at this time for Miguel Rodríguez,

and he agrees to help us,

provided that we provide him and his family safe passage

and protection to the United States.

He had a great deal of information and he told us

that Miguel was hiding in an apartment in downtown Cali.

(speaking in native language).

SALAMEH: We did an early morning raid.

SALAMEH: It's a small, three‐bedroom apartment.

We spent probably 12 hours in this apartment.

And in 12 hours we couldn't find him.

There was an air shaft that went along the center

of the building, all the way up the building,

and part of the wall in that shaft was the wall

in the guest bathroom.

We finally figured out that he was in that air shaft,

behind the bathroom wall.

Just didn't know how to access it at the time.

And I had this hammer drill.

We were drilling the wall of that bathroom.

And we were drilling it and drilling it.

FEISTL: There were phone calls being made that we were

getting close to finding Miguel.

Well, once we were able to drill through several

inches of concrete, you can see that the drill hit

an open air pocket.

As we're literally a few minutes away from arresting

him in this hidden compartment.

We were shut down by a Colombian prosecutor,

and we are forced to leave the building.

SALAMEH: And the next day, the front page of the paper showed

the vanity of that bathroom with the doors open,

and there was blood spattered in there.

So, I think I hit him with the drill bit.

FEISTL: Cali Cartel employed the best architects,

the best construction workers, and they were able to develop

secret hiding places within houses or apartments.

SALAMEH: You could walk into an apartment.

If you didn't have the exact location of where these

compartments were, you would never find 'em.

They could be behind bookcases,

they could be anywhere, and we had to prevent

Miguel Rodríguez from getting inside his caleta.

When you get a group o' guys like us together,

we're not stopping till we get our objective.

♪ ♪

SALAMEH: We didn't know exactly where Miguel was.

But our informant helped us to determine that it's probably

one of two apartment buildings in Cali that we were

now looking at.

Over the course of, like, a week or ten days or so,

we kept watching those buildings.

SALAMEH: We determine the profile of Miguel.

He stayed up late at night.

I mean, very late at night.

So, little by little, all the lights in the building went out.

Except for these.

And we said, "That's gotta be it, the tenth floor."

FEISTL: We were able to contact General Serrano,

summon troops from Bogotá and launch another raid.

If we're able to get into the apartment quickly,

this would prevent Miguel Rodríguez from getting

inside his caleta.

♪ ♪

And we all branch off into different sections of the apartment,

trying to cover as much ground as possible.

Within 30 seconds, we got him in the master bedroom closet,

trying to get into a caleta.

It was close.

I mean, we'd o' been there for days looking for him.

Another minute or so and they would have had that

compartment closed up and sealed up and it would have

been extremely difficult, if not impossible to locate.

SALAMEH: But they got him.

We got him.

REPORTER (over TV): Police raided an apartment in the

cocaine center of Cali early today,

and caught the reputed boss of the world's

Number One drug gang.

REPORTER 2 (over TV): Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela

oversaw the world's most powerful drug smuggling operation.

REPORTER (over TV): The demise of the Cali Cartel may

well constitute the most significant police action

against drug smugglers in history.

FEISTL: Power kinda fell to him as the de facto leader of

the Cali Cartel.

FEISTL: But it was short‐lived.

(gunshots)

♪ ♪

FEISTL: I think that was a sign to him that this is

probably not what he signed up for.

REPORTER (over TV): This morning, Miguel and

Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela pleaded guilty in a

federal court in Miami to a charge of a conspiracy to

import cocaine in the United States.

They each were immediately sentenced to 30 years in prison

FEISTL: The cocaine trade at this point in time is

financing a lot of the criminal groups in Colombia.

REPORTER (over TV): The cocaine war will only bring

more bloodshed and strengthen the violent extremes

in this pained nation.

CALDERÓN: I think everybody will think Colombia's

a sinking ship.

REPORTER (over TV): The paramilitaries in the

fight compete for business.

SALAMEH: They were major criminals.

Kidnapping, murder, drug trafficking, the whole thing.

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.