#436 - Trump's Narco Deal, Cartel Cannibals & Mexico's JFK Files Revealed | Ioan Grillo

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Ioan Grillo is a journalist from the UK who has been living in Mexico since 2000, writing stories, books and making documentaries about Mexican drug cartels and organized crime. SPONSORS https://shopify.com/dannyjones - Start your free trial today. https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/zralgyl0 - Download Cash App today. https://hexclad.com/dannyjones - Get 10% off your forever cookware. https://undrdog.com - Our listeners get 30% off their entire order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. EPISODE LINKS https://www.crashoutmedia.com https://x.com/ioangrillo *NEW* DJP MERCH https://dannyjonespodcast.com Get paid to make clips from the show: https://discord.com/invite/dannyjones FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Mexico Journalism & Cartel Turf Wars 07:47 - Los Zetas, Military Defectors & Mexico's Cartel War 11:18 - How Cartels Control Mexican Police & Government 20:44 - Sinaloa's Governor & Alleged Chapitos Ties 22:26 - El Mencho's Killing, CIA Drones & Drug Boat Strikes 29:31 - Colombian Pro Bono Drug Smuggling Case 32:42 - Trump's Cartel Deals, Honduras Pardons & Maduro 39:41 - Maduro's Capture, Cuban Guards & Sonic Weapons 44:17 - Venezuela's Collapse, Mass Migration & Voting Machines 48:17 - Venezuelan Police, Airport Detention & Fear 53:08 - Kidnapped At Gunpoint: A Cartel Reporter's PTSD 57:08 - Cartel Cannibalism & Training Camps 01:06:07 - Mexican Marines & A Family Massacre 01:08:21 - Mexico's Mass Graves & Families Searching For The Missing 01:15:52 - Sinaloa Turf Wars, Forced Recruitment & State Police 01:21:11 - Lucky Luciano, The CIA & America's Drug War 01:26:16 - El Mayo's Kidnapping & The Sinaloa Cartel Families 01:30:39 - Meeting El Chapo's Mother In Sinaloa 01:39:28 - How El Mayo Was Tricked & His Plane's Museum Plaque 01:47:21 - Mexico's Indigenous Militia & Cartel Resistance 01:50:28 - El Mencho's Death & Alleged Military Execution 01:56:17 - Pegasus Spyware, Cartel Phone Hacks & Weaponized Drones 02:05:05 - Could Cartels Acquire Nuclear Weapons? 02:05:10 - Cartel Terror Tactics & The Siege Of Culiacán 02:13:30 - Stolen Ancient Artifacts & Cartel Contraband 02:14:53 - Would Drug Legalization Weaken Mexico's Cartels? 02:20:34 - Chinese Meth Superlabs, A $205 Million Bust & Vegas 02:30:16 - Chinese Fentanyl, Mexican Opium & The Heroin Boom 02:40:18 - Cocaine's Boom Years & The Economics Of Trafficking 02:46:06 - Cartel Wealth, Billionaires & The Pursuit Of Power 02:49:12 - El Salvador's Gang War & Bukele's Mass Arrests 02:53:00 - MS-13 Origins, Black Sabbath & Los Angeles 03:00:11 - Nayib Bukele's Background & El Salvador's Crackdown 03:02:54 - The Bukele Wallet Story 03:06:50 - Javier Valdez, El Chapo's Family & Murdered Journalists 03:15:31 - How Mexicans View Americans & US Intervention 03:17:21 - CIA Officers, A Cartel Lab Raid & Car Bomb Allegations 03:28:17 - Interviewing Cartel Hitmen & What They Get Paid 03:32:54 - Seized Cartel Phones & Government Corruption 03:37:28 - Police Leaking Witness Statements To Cartels 03:39:52 - Cartel Punishments, Informants & Fear 03:43:19 - Jamaica's Dudus Coke & Gang-Controlled Communities 03:46:50 - Brazil's Comando Vermelho & Favela Parties 03:52:14 - Lee Harvey Oswald's Mexico Trip, The CIA & DFS Files 03:59:10 - Oswald, The Cuban Embassy & Competing JFK Theories 04:04:26 - Fidel Castro, JFK & Cold War Assassination Theories 04:07:27 - The CIA & The Term Conspiracy Theory 04:08:39 - Adam Curtis, Media Narratives & British Documentaries 04:11:05 - Ioan Grillo's New Book & Reporting From Mexico Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Danny Jones?

  All right, Yohan, thanks for coming, dude. I'm really excited to talk to you. I've been really excited to talk to you specifically because you're one of the few reporters, like we were talking about earlier, that's reporting on all the stuff that's happening in Mexico, who actually lives in Mexico full-time. And you've been living there for like 25 years, is that right?

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right, yeah, 25 years.

• 0:24Danny Jones?

  So what made you want to move to Mexico City?

• 0:28Speaker 01

  So I'm from the UK originally, from near a city called Brighton, which is a seaside town. I say it's the Acapulco of England.

• 0:39Danny Jones?

  The Acapulco of England.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  The Miami of England.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I say it as a joke, it has stones and cold water. But yeah, I fancied traveling the world, being a journalist. And one of my inspirations, going back, was the movie Salvador by Oliver Stone. Have you ever seen that? Oliver Stone's first movie.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Funny, so in that movie, I was James Woods playing this crazy photographer who's covering the Civil War in El Salvador in the 80s. And he's a kind of crazy, wide kind of guy. And I was like, I want to be that guy.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  So, yeah. So anyway, so I came to Mexico City. And my original plan was to be like two years and maybe move on. And then one thing led to another, and I ended up staying there. My first job was for a newspaper in Mexico City called The News, original name, The News, which was an English-language paper run by a Mexican owner called Don Romulo Faril, a Mexican with an Irish name, who had a Mexican newspaper called Novidadis, and he had an English-language newspaper called The News. So I started working there for like $600 a month when I first arrived. And yeah, that was my first jump into journalism.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  And it was fun. I mean, I was, because I was paid a little money, I'd be taking the Mexican microbuses to the press conferences and then going to a press conference with like coffee, arnana and that kind of thing. One of my early stories there was like, I started getting into doing the drug thing right away. And, you know, one of my early stories was covering the court martial, some generals for drug trafficking. I started covering crack sellers. Crack was a big thing back then in Mexico, which is kind of becoming a big thing. Now it's more crystal meth in terms of use in Mexico. And yeah, one thing led to, I started working for the Houston Chronicle out of Texas, Associated Press, and then Time Magazine, New York Times, and then just doing independent stuff, writing a trio of books.

• 2:49Danny Jones?

  And how old were you when you first moved down there?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  I was 27.

• 2:52Danny Jones?

  27?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was 27 when I arrived in Mexico in 2000. And yeah, it was kind of, I'd been messing around for a bit in the UK and it was just like, yeah, you know, get out there and do some journalism. It's kind of a shame that like back in the day, back in those days, these English-language newspapers existed around the world, and it was a good way to start journalism in different countries. You know, you arrive with a backpack and you can start working for one of these papers. Nowadays, I get a lot of mails, from emails from young people wanting to start in journalism, foreign journalism, and it's like very difficult, where do you start? You know, where's that first base?

• 3:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  You can go to. And that's kind of taken away now because those English-language newspapers hardly exist anymore because, you know, you've got the internet.

• 3:39Danny Jones?

  Right. And so, yeah, that's interesting. If those don't exist as much anymore, and like, you know, the way that we're, in this world we're living in, with independent media dominating everything, like, how does one tackle that in a place like Mexico?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  I mean, you've got people coming through still, you know, people who are determined, and they're going out there and finding ways, I mean, finding ways of freelancing for mainstream media, or also doing independent stuff, you know, there's a merger of that things. But it's funny how things have changed. I mean, when I was working for the Houston Chronicle, so I worked for the Houston Chronicle from 2004 till 2006, 2003 to 2006. And back then, there was much less care about security issues because there hadn't been the level of violence there's been since. So they'd send me, for example, to cover Nuevo Laredo, over the border from Laredo,

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Texas, where there was a turf war beginning in that place between the Sinaloa cartel and the Setas Gulf cartel. And in a way, this was the beginning of the war that was spread across Mexico. There was some fundamental changes happening there to the way people were fighting. But when they sent me there, they'd just say, get up there, you know, get yourself, just get up there, we need stories right now. Get on a plane to Monterrey, rent a car, drive there, there was no security protocol, there was no like, you know, anything. Like nowadays, journalists are a lot more, for mainstream outlets are more restricted

• 5:19Speaker 01

  about where they can go and where they can move because of the violence there's been. But then it was just get up there. So I was, you know, just get up there and they'd just say, give us stories. So I just tried to figure out, okay, how do I get stories in this place on the drug cartel stuff? And first of all, I was like, okay, I'm gonna go and hang around with drug addicts. Because I grew up in a small town, you know, I say, near Brighton in the UK, the Acapulco of England. The small town I grew up in particularly was a lot of heroin use back in the late 80s, early 90s. So I knew a lot of people who ended up taking heroin there. So I thought, okay, I've hung around with drug addicts before, it's not so hard to hang around with drug addicts and see what they know, you know, what can the drug addicts tell me? How can they tell me who sells drugs? How do things work in the city?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  And that was one of my first ways in, was just hang around at like drug rehab centers, hang around at places where they take drugs and trying to find, that was one of my first ways to try and understand. Now, I started there covering some quite crazy stuff, like a lot of people who were like massacres that were happening there. And since then, I've talked to some of the people on, you know, the cartel side, the big guys who were moving the forces around that time, and understood more what was happening. But basically, that was a kind of change of violence. And instead of being the old school, like guys with shaved heads and tattoos, shooting people with pistols, it was paramilitary organized crime.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  So it was guys with metal helmets, AK-47s, you know, radios, bulletproof jackets, doing proper paramilitary kind of killings, and then that spread across Mexico.

• 6:55Danny Jones?

  And these are cartel, like paramilitary cartel operations?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what happened right around that area? So when you go back to the 1990s, you had these cartels coming to prominence in Mexico. So you had in Tijuana, the Tijuana cartel, or the Ariana Felix brothers.

• 7:18Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  In Juarez, you had the Amado Correio Fuentes, Lord of the Skies. And over on the Texas border, on that part of the Texas border, by the Gulf of Mexico, you had the Gulf cartel. And so originally, they were using violence, but they were using, say, more like, they'd bring in, you know, like the Tijuana cartel were bringing gang members from the United States. They'd get these guys from the Logan Heights gang, you know, in the United States. So these were guys who were getting tattooed, shaved heads, gang bangers. And they'd bring them in to do like hits in Mexico, do crimes in Mexico.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Then what happened in the, around the Gulf area was Osvaldo Cardenas, the head of the Gulf cartel, recruited members of the Mexican military.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  So from a special forces group in the Mexican military, and these became the Setas.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  So he recruited these guys because, you know, they could make more money working for the drug cartel than working for the government.

• 8:30Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  And the first guy he recruited from the Setas was called Arturo Guzmán de Senna, who was known as Z1, Seta1.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And the initial ones had Z numbers, Z one, Z two, Z three, Z four, right through. The third one he recruited, who was Z three and became very, very prominent, was called Roberto Lascano, from Hidalgo, Mexico. And these guys, because they came from the military, they immediately changed the game and said, we're going to bring a military, um, military techniques to this gang violence.

• 9:09Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  So, right, you know, like, you know, your gang bangers messing around, we're going to go in there. Now, in, in the city of Nuevo Laredo, you had a fight there. So the, the main Gulf Cartel territory was over in Matamoros, like down the road. And Nuevo Laredo, for a long time, was kind of everybody could use it for trafficking drugs. It wasn't specifically a territory that one cartel could use. But there started to be a conflict there between groups related to the Sinaloans and groups related to Osel Cardenas and the Gulf Cartel. They started having a conflict, having a fight, and people were being killed.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  So Osel Cardenas sent the setters to the city, and the setters went in there and they were like, we're going to wipe out the Sinaloa cartel people. And they came in there and started using their military-style tactics.

• 10:03Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  So I was, also, I was covering this as a young journalist, and I didn't really understand, you know, there's suddenly like, a lot of bodies are turning up. And one of the early scenes, there was a, a bunch of gang members, gang bangers, who had been sent there by the Sinaloa cartel, who were actually Central American guys with, with tattoos, they had MS-13 tattoos. And they were sent there and the setters killed them, killed them all and piled up their bodies. And they put a sign saying, send more bendejos like these. You know, bendejos meaning, you know, send more idiots like these.

• 10:39Danny Jones?

  Dumb asses.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, dumb asses like these, so we can kill them. And it was like, we're changing the game here. So immediately the Sinaloa cartel was like, okay, we're also going to have to recruit military guys. We're also going to have to

• 10:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  step up our operations. And that's why you had this big change in Mexico. You know, you go back to the nineties, the eighties, it was, you know, it wasn't like this. Then a big change where you start creating paramilitary organized crime, you know, cartels, but, you know, guys in, you start seeing the photos now, the images you've seen

• 11:08Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  of guys with metal helmets, AK-47s, you know, 50 of them, 100 of them, you know, crazy scenes. But this was the escalation that began there and then spread across Mexico.

• 11:17Danny Jones?

  So what, what do you think the biggest difference has been since the time when you first got down to Mexico and now? Like, what has been the biggest, what is the biggest difference in your opinion in the way that, like, the whole cartel landscape has changed?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  So, um, i- it's night and day. If I compare, you know, those early days, you know, 2001, two, three, when I was first covering this, compared to now. Um, but what you had is now, now you have, then you had, um, people who were interested in trafficking drugs, you know, back then it was the big cocaine smuggling.

• 11:58Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  From Colombia to the United States. People buying, you know, buying the cocaine from, from, from Colombia. It, you know, it would shift off since the nineties, the, the, the main route had moved, it used to be here in Florida, then they'd bring all the cocaine to the United States.

• 12:13Danny Jones?

  Uh-huh.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Then it shifted to Mexico. So it was all about moving the bricks of cocaine and the organizations, you know, buy my cocaine in Colombia for $2,000 for a kilo brick.

• 12:22Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Sell it, you know, on the Mexican, you know, US border for 20, you know, inside the United States, on the border for $20,000 a brick, or different price, you know, prices vary around. Then people start selling it inside, or $17,000 a brick.

• 12:37Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  And then people start selling it inside. And, and that was, that was the big business. People just cared about moving cocaine to the United States. That was the big business. Marijuana was a big deal back then as well.

• 12:46Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  You know, huge amounts of, you know, before any legalization of marijuana in the United States.

• 12:51Danny Jones?

  Caro Quintero, all those guys.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, Caro Quintero, big into marijuana. Yeah, huge marijuana plantations all over Mexico. Bring them to Mexico, bring them to the United States, and then sell that, make a markup. And then nowadays, and, and, you know, but back then, they, they had, they had hitmen, they had guys, they had police on their payroll. But also then it was, you know, in the nineties, it was more the police were a bit the ones on top. The police guys were the ones who kind of controlled the business more, and the, and the gangsters, the drug traffickers were a bit more underneath them.

• 13:29Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  And I can give a funny story to illustrate this, uh, this, this world, but, uh, so like, a story about this, to illustrate this world, is that go back to the 1980s, and you had a trafficker called Pablo Costa, who was known as the, the, the Desert Fox. And he was a guy who was moving drugs, uh, over, a lot of it into the Big Bend Park. And, uh, there was a story that he gave, which a journalist who interviewed him told, an American journalist interviewed him. When he was going to the Chihuahua State Police to negotiate the terms where he would traffic drugs and pay them some money.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  He would take over the plaza, like, the turf to traffic drugs into the United States. This small little turf, this area, called Ochenaga, in, in this small town in Mexico. So he went to the Chihuahua State Police Department in the city of Chihuahua to negotiate terms. And he arrived and like, you know, knocked on the door, you know, it's the Chihuahua State Police. And they're like, you know, who are you? And I'm here to negotiate terms. Oh, really? Come with us. Electric shocks on his nuts, like, inside the, like, water with, you know, chili, they could put water, put chili in the water, stuck his head in there, so he's like, he's

• 14:55Speaker 01

  like, his head is stinging, you know, really, you know, beating him down, two days of torture. Then after, after they said, well done, you got the job.

• 15:05Danny Jones?

  Oh my God.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  So that shows, back in the day, how the, the, the police were the ones running the show.

• 15:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And the cartels underneath.

• 15:21Danny Jones?

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• 16:06Danny Jones?

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• 16:16Speaker 01

  And I'll give you a story from more recently, um, which shows a change in the roles.

• 16:23Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  So I was filming a documentary, and this is up in Sonora area. And we had to negotiate, we had to, we had to film, wanted to film in the city of Agua Prieta. You know that small town on the border, Agua Prieta, near Douglas, Arizona?

• 16:45Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  So we, we're going, we're looking at a massacre that'd been in this town. A, a, a big, a big gunfight between two section, two cartel factions, the Sinaloa cartel faction, people loyal to Chapitos, and the Juarez cartel, Linear faction.

• 17:08Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  There was a big gunfight in this town. And, uh, we were, we were, wanted to go up and film there. So we went up, uh, to, uh, and first of all, I was, went to a neighborhood, asking people in the neighborhood, you know, would they appear on camera?

• 17:27Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Uh, describing where they were when the massacre took place.

• 17:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, we were talking to them and finding people, you know, maybe would they, you know, maybe they could talk to me off camera, but would they appear on camera? Maybe it's kind of dangerous for them.

• 17:43Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  And by being in this neighborhood and asking people, we'd triggered off the cartel guys in the city, like, not being happy we were there. So we, we'd been in contact with some local journalists, and one of them reached out to us and said, you've got to leave. They, they said, you've got, you know, you have, you should leave now, you should leave the city right now. You've got to get out of here. Uh, you know, these, they're not happy you're here, you know who, they want you to go right now. We're in a, at this small hotel with a journalist, and we said, can, you know, you know, you know the guys, get on the phone to them.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  So we'd like to talk to them, we'll, we'll meet them here, and tell them to come to the hotel. And we'll, we'll talk to them, try and negotiate this.

• 18:34Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  So we're sitting there, and a car drives up, and the guy kind of pulls, pulls up in the car, and he's got, you can see like AK-47s sitting on the back. Guy comes out, big, big guy, and he comes out, and it's like, you, you guys have got to get out of here. And it's me and another guy who's a very experienced guy as well, um, who's very good at dealing with these kind of people.

• 19:04Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And, and we both said, oh, you know, how you doing? You know, we, we, you know, we don't, not coming, you know, with disrespect here, we just, you know, we wanted to look at this. And he looks at us, this guy, for a second, and he says, okay, look, you can't film anything right now, maybe you can come back and we can talk about, you have permission to film here. Look, look, okay, you don't have to leave right away, um, you know, you could stay here, let me know, maybe, you know, there's a bar around the corner, you know, maybe you'll get lucky, you know, there's a few girls in the bar around there. And he said, that he, at the end, he says, okay, you can stay here, leave tomorrow, don't know, no rush. You have any problems with the police, give me a call.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  So it shows who is on top, who is the guy leading the show.

• 19:53Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  In that situation.

• 19:54Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Nowadays, particularly the local cops are there.

• 19:59Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Uh, and the cartels often.

• 20:01Danny Jones?

  They work for the cartels now.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 20:04Danny Jones?

  Right. So the cartels are the top layer of society. They're the ones running the show.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  No, it's even more complicated than that. So you've got like, you know, with Mexico, I guess like the United States as well, but Mexico's very keen on saying it has three levels of government, municipal, state, and federal.

• 20:21Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  So often the municipal level, they're going to be below the cartel.

• 20:27Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Cause the cartels are just so powerful.

• 20:29Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Now, the state level, that can vary. Sometimes you have cartels which are very, very powerful in certain states. Like you look at the accusations right now from the indictment of the United States against the governor of Sinaloa.

• 20:44Danny Jones?

  Oh, I didn't know about that.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically, uh, Ruben Roger Moya, uh, is the gov- was the governor of Sinaloa and now he's, he's on leave.

• 20:51Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Um, and he is accused by US prosecutors of working for the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa cartel. Now they lay out in this indictment, uh, like, okay, this is how it works. The cops on the payroll, the Sinaloa cops on the payroll. Um, various, you know, they have 10 people in the indictment as well as the governor. You have, uh, various people, uh, politicians in this state and they're working for the cartel.

• 21:20Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Now it's a negotiation, but in that you could say as well, the cartel is maybe the senior partner in that nego- negotiation in that particular place. Because the Sinaloa cartel is very powerful. But then you have the federal level. So then you have, you know, things like, um, the Mexican Marines, Mexican military.

• 21:42Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  And then they can outgun the cartel.

• 21:45Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  You know, generally when it comes to

• 21:48Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  A gunfight between the Mexican Marines, the army and the cartels.

• 21:55Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  The Mexican government is going to win that gunfight.

• 21:59Danny Jones?

  And that's like what happened with El Mencho, right?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's, because we've also got the, the US comes in this equation as well.

• 22:04Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:05Danny Jones?

  Right. Well, the US, they've been a part of the equation for a while, right?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so, so how did the US?

• 22:10Danny Jones?

  A little bit more behind the scenes though.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, yeah. But overall, I would say you have, this is a, you know, a big fight of power with the US involved, Mex- different levels of Mexican government involved, cartels involved.

• 22:19Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  And, and all kinds of compromises and pacts being made also by the United States as well as by, by Mexican forces. But yeah, Mencho, that was, that was a crazy one. The, the, the, uh, the killing of Mencho or.

• 22:31Danny Jones?

  That was just earlier this year, right?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, February 22nd.

• 22:36Danny Jones?

  February 22nd, right. And, and after they allegedly, what, did they kill him or did they kidnap him? I don't remember.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Well, so

• 22:46Speaker 01

  the story, uh, so the story, the official story they gave was that they went into these cabins in a town called Tapalpa.

• 22:56Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Mexico. Uh, and there was a gunfight and they said they got El Mencho.

• 23:04Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  And his two bodyguards.

• 23:08Danny Jones?

  Who said this?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  The Mexican military.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  They said they, they took them all injured. And they all happened to die in transit to Mexico City. Or in transit, it was going to go first to the city of Morelia, then Mexico City.

• 23:27Danny Jones?

  How'd they transport them? On helicopters?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Now, i- if, if you say like, I, you know, I went to the, the cabin, a lot of journalists, we went to the cabins, which were very strange environment where the, where the shootout happened.

• 23:38Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  And it was quite hard to piece together really how things had gone down. Uh, they, they say there was a CIA drone involved. And the CIA, the CIA, uh, since, uh, Trump came back into power.

• 23:54Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  In, uh, two thousand, January two thousand twenty five, January twenty two, two thousand twenty five, Trump put the CIA much more into the fight against cartels. He said to the CIA, I want you more involved in this. And, you know, he declared them as being foreign terrorist organizations.

• 24:15Danny Jones?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  The Jalisco, Jalisco Generation cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, and a big list of cartels as well as a list of various gangs in Latin America. So he said, okay, I'm going to declare you foreign terrorist organizations. And among things, you know, as well as, you know, we're going to do military missile strikes on some of your resources.

• 24:35Danny Jones?

  Missile strikes?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, like in the, in the Caribbean. Have you, have you seen this? They've, they've, they've shot down, uh, they, they've, uh.

• 24:41Danny Jones?

  Like the shit they were doing in Venezuela where they're shooting the boats?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. But they, they done it in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. So they've said, we now have a right to shoot alleged drug traffickers with missile strikes. Um, so they fight, you know, send hellfire missiles at these, they've killed.

• 24:59Danny Jones?

  A million dollar missile at a

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Danny Jones?

  twelve thousand dollar wooden canoe or a wooden boat trafficking, a single engine outboard.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, actually, a lot of those boats, they, they tend, the smuggling boats tend to have, often they'll have four, uh, motors, you know, four, but they, they'd be like these kind of go fast boats.

• 25:16Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  So they'd be pretty speedy boats, but yeah, even so.

• 25:18Danny Jones?

  I was skeptical when they were releasing those videos. Remember when they initially did that operation or they, when they were gearing up to do that operation to condemn Maduro?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Danny Jones?

  And Fox News was showing all the videos of those little outboard boats, you know, try, I don't know where the videos were, but they were shooting them out of the sky, shooting them out of the water with rockets.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:36Danny Jones?

  And they, they were saying that, oh, this is how they're trafficking drugs. They're sending them from Venezuela to the United States. But like, how the fuck does that little boat with one engine get all the way to the, like, how does that work?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:48Danny Jones?

  Is that real?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Uh, there, it's misleading. I think it's misleading. So basically, uh, they've been hitting these, these boats in the Caribbean and in the, in the Pacific. Now they don't tell you how they have intelligence that these boats are smuggling drugs. They don't give you exact locations or details.

• 26:08Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  They just normally say, yeah, yeah, this, this kind of stuff.

• 26:11Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  They say, you know, this is in the Caribbean.

• 26:13Danny Jones?

  Killed after US military strikes, three more alleged drug.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  That was in the, in the Pacific.

• 26:17Danny Jones?

  Look at that little boat.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's in the Pacific. So now.

• 26:21Danny Jones?

  Oh, that's the Pacific.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one's the Pacific ones, but some of them are, some of them are, are Pacific, some of them are, are Caribbean.

• 26:28Danny Jones?

  It seems like absurd to be able to use a missile to shoot that little boat.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Now, i- i- it could well be that

• 26:37Speaker 01

  they've got eyes in the sky, you know, they've got these, these weeper drones. They're constantly looking and they see one of those boats moving real fast over and they say, okay, let's go for it. Let's hit it.

• 26:46Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Often those boats are the ones smuggling drugs. So I'd say probably it's true that most of them are smuggling drugs. You know, we can't be sure, but that's, we could presume that many of them are, even so, to say we're going to kill you for smuggling drugs. There's a death sentence.

• 27:05Danny Jones?

  So it's just like a, a show of force?

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 27:09Danny Jones?

  Like a threat?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  So, well, so their idea like, you know, they'll hit these boats. Now, say a lot of them are smuggling drugs. Let's say, this is, this is

• 27:17Speaker 01

  say, this is safe, you know, giving them the benefit of the doubt they're smuggling drugs. What are you achieving by this now? When the ones in the Caribbean, they go from Venezuela, a lot of drugs were and still are smuggled out of Venezuela. It's a big cocaine smuggling hub. That is true.

• 27:31Danny Jones?

  Okay. And they're smuggled from Venezuela through Mexico?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Through, so, so Venezuela's, the reason Venezuela became a big smuggling hub is because Colombia, you had a government which was for a long time, became much harder about fighting cocaine

• 27:48Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  trafficking in Colombia. So beforehand, they just, you know, they'd, they'd like, you know, get boats out of Colombia, uh, and, and take, you know, for, for years back, you know, getting boats, you know, out of the over the Caribbean from Colombia or jumping planes from Colombia. It became harder. So they move a lot of the cocaine from Colombia to Venezuela. Then sometimes they move it Venezuela, uh, on planes, Venezuela, Honduras, Honduras, Mexico, Mexico, the United States.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Some of these boats, they'll move it to the Caribbean. So they'll move it to like Trinidad, for example, and then to the United States, or some of it can also be going to Europe. I mean, Europe

• 28:29Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  has got a huge cocaine market. Europe right now is a bigger cocaine market than the United States.

• 28:34Danny Jones?

  I've heard that.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  However, even so, hitting these boats, what's the actual strategy there when it comes to, to fighting drugs? These are moving cocaine, not fentanyl. The fentanyl is, is not moving, moved in small boats through the Caribbean or the Pacific. The fentanyl is generally made in Mexico, manufactured in Mexico, you know, cooked in Mexico and, and taken over the border. Now it's also cooked in Canada. It's also cooked here in the United States. Uh. So what's the biggest strategy there? You know, a lot of it is about showing you as force. I think there's a.

• 29:13Danny Jones?

  Make a spectacle on the news, justify some sort of kidnapping in another country or whatever, like a pretext, like a buildup of a buildup of theatrics, just to show the public, like, look what we're doing. This is, this is, you know, we have to take out these drug traffickers. Um, the best education I got on this early on was from a lawyer friend of mine, who was working pro bono when he was starting out his law career. And he got a, his first case that he got was a Colombian ship captain, who was bringing a huge cargo ship from Colombia to the port of Tampa right here.

• 29:55Danny Jones?

  On the way here, he got boarded by cartel pirates. And they basically put a gun to his head and said, you're going to take these, I think it was eighty tons of cocaine into the port of Tampa. Uh, if you, if you don't agree, we're just gonna kill you and your whole family. So of course he did it. This guy was just, you know, a probably poor boat captain who didn't make much money.

• 30:22Danny Jones?

  And so he brought the boat in or whatever, and he, they got caught. And they were trying to send him to prison for like life, I think, for that much cocaine. And um, my buddy took the job pro bono and defended him. And he ended up getting him off completely scot-free, just to like, and because they told the whole story of how that happened, like this guy was just a pawn being used by these people who are way above him, that are above any sort of law. They have, they're able to hire the best lawyers and they're sitting in a Ritz Carlton in Mexico City right now. But you want to spend all these resources and, you know, all this, uh, you know, this prosecute this thing in the, in the United States,

• 31:02Danny Jones?

  which at the end of the day, if you end up sending this guy to jail, it's gonna do nothing in the big picture scheme of things. So, you know, that really kind of illuminated to me how the whole sort of like prosecution of the war on drugs is so backwards, because it only seems like they focus on these pawns of the operation who are just transporting. The guys who are driving the boats full of drugs from country A to country B are, they're not in charge of anything, most likely. They're just probably getting paid pennies on the dollar to what the the head honcho, the people like Guzmán and El Maya were doing. A year ago, I got a text message about an unpaid toll, and then I paid it without even thinking about it.

• 31:43Danny Jones?

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• 32:28Danny Jones?

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• 32:42Speaker 01

  What I will say, uh, I guess to look at the issue of, of cartels and how, what Trump, the Trump administration has done with this, is on one side, you know, what some of the Republicans have said about this for a while, that these are, you know, these cartels are very serious organizations, and we should care about what they're doing. Um, is correct. I mean, the amount of bloodshed they've unleashed in Mexico is, is, you know, off the charts. You know, we're talking about half a million murders in the last quarter of a century, you know, like horrific stuff that's happened, horrific stuff to Mexican civilians and to US civilians who've gone over. And, you know, it is a worry that this stuff is happening south the border.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Saying that, that's coming with a lot of US money is funding that, people who buy drugs. And, and various things, you know, US accounts were made, US guns were involved and different things. But on one side, I get the idea they're gonna take this, this seriously, you know, the idea, um, we really wanna step up against cartels, that's legitimate. I also think the issue of fentanyl deaths, you know, that was absolutely off the chart, the level of fentanyl deaths there's been, and that was really something, you know, this is one of the reasons, I think, uh, people, you know, one of the reasons people were concerned about the border was the amount of fentanyl coming in and the amount of deaths and, you know, people feeling this is not

• 34:09Speaker 01

  treated seriously enough. I mean, so many people out there listening to this will, will know people who have died of fentanyl. So this stuff was very legitimate. On the other side,

• 34:21Speaker 01

  like you say, killing, uh, smugglers moving cocaine, if they indeed are, you know. Um, and other things that are happening at the same time with this, like you see the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who I interviewed back in twenty fourteen, I interviewed this guy. And, you know, the time when I interviewed him, he was like, yeah, America needs to give us more money to help us fight drug traffickers. Because, you know, you know, you, in America, it's the people who are taking drugs. Give us some more money to fight these guys. It turned out he was involved in, in smuggling drugs, or he, he was accused of this.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  He was taken to the United States, he was found guilty, and he was convicted and found guilty, and then Trump pardoned him.

• 35:12Danny Jones?

  I heard about that. That was, this was recently, wasn't it?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, yeah. So, it was, yeah, late last year, so Trump.

• 35:20Danny Jones?

  Wasn't there, I remember there being some sort of strategic reason he pardoned him.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  So there's different theories behind this. Uh, uh, okay, so you had Roger Stone involved in this, he's like lobbying on behalf of.

• 35:32Danny Jones?

  Roger Stone, yeah.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  So, so, okay, the argument, the argument they used was, oh, this was a Biden conviction, you know, Biden did it, and, you know, this was like a Biden thing to convict, because he's a right wing guy, Orlando Hernandez. Uh, but I don't think it was a Biden thing. If you look at the case against him, this was done by agent, US agents, and by prosecutors, it wasn't a political persecution. It was a case built up by law enforcement agents and prosecutors over a bunch of years going after this guy. And, uh, so, you know, was it, you know, really the idea that they're making, you know, they're doing, uh, giving this guy justice because he was politically persecuted? I don't think, I don't really buy that argument, but that's their argument.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Uh, one thing, was this a straight up bribe? You know, is there a system where basically people are able to give money for pardons? A kind of cash for pardons scheme going on? Now that's convincing. Or was this political? So you have strategic objectives in Latin America right now. Um, and in Honduras, you had the left wing party in power. And they, they support the right wing and he's part of the right wing, so we'll, we'll let him off to kind of help that cause and then to help international business with interests in Honduras. That might be the case. So like, uh, you're using the war on drugs selectively.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  So Nicolas Maduro, again, I don't, I think the guy, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.

• 37:07Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  So they took him out on January the third.

• 37:09Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  You know, raced down there after that happened to the, to the Venezuela-Colombia border. I've, I've reported in Venezuela for, for a few times. Now Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro was a horrible president. I mean, you know, he was a, he was a horrible president. I've got no sympathy for Nicolas Maduro.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, the, the conditions in Venezuela were terrible for, for the Venezuelan people under him. It was a disaster.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  And also, I believe, I think it's convincing that there was a lot of drugs being smuggled, a lot of cocaine being smuggled under Maduro. Now, was he personally involved? And I can get some of the details about that, but I've talked to, uh, a cocaine smuggler who moved cocaine out of Venezuela

• 37:58Speaker 01

  under Nicolas Maduro, and he gave me some interesting details about this, a pilot called Fernando, Fernando Blenjio, who, who owned airplanes and moving, you know, I interviewed him when he was in prison here in North Carolina in the United States.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  But like. Was cocaine moved on to him? Yes. Was he a horrific president? Yes. But did the Trump administration take him out for political strategic objectives? Also, yes. And then what's happening right now in Venezuela? They put his vice president, Delsi Rodriguez, they put her in power. They still allow this authoritarian apparatus in the country. And there's probably still cocaine being smuggled out of there. But they're making deals to get Venezuelan oil. So, you know, is some, are some of these things legitimate? Yes, you know, like, you know, fentanyl is horrible.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  These traffickers are evil or, you know, some of these cartels are evil organizations. Who are committing mass murder. All of that stuff is true. But also, are they using this for strategic objectives with a certain agenda? Yeah, also true.

• 39:08Danny Jones?

  The politicians are, people like Trump.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  The Trump administration, yes.

• 39:11Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it's like layers, it's like nesting dolls of cartels, right? Like, the whole political organization of the United States is a cartel in its own way. Because they're all using corporations to make money. And they're doing slick under, underhanded deals with other countries for oil. Or for whatever, or using drug money to, you know, have slush funds to buy weapons or to traffic weapons. It's like, the more you learn about this stuff, the more you realize, like, the whole world is just stacked layers of organized crime. And nothing is about the people.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, in some ways, I mean, like, when, when, when they took out Maduro. And that was, you know, it was, it was, it was a audacious operation. It was a higher risk operation.

• 39:49Danny Jones?

  What is the story, is it true about all those supersonic weapons they were using? Or sound like crazy DARPA weapons?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I mean, they talked about the de, uh, de-covulator, there's what's the strange names of, of things. So that they, they, I mean, it was, it was a risky operation. So it was, uh, for, for, for some Trump supporters, they might say, well, yes, that stuff is true. Trump is the bigger gangster, you know, like you have Maduro is a gangster who runs Venezuela. And he takes resources for himself and allows drugs to be smuggled. And Trump's a bigger gangster who comes in and, well, I'll take that guy out. But then some Trump supporters will say, well, we prefer to have the bigger gangster. On our, on our, on our side, you know, or, you know, or there, there, there's, there's different arguments about this, you know.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  But like, so with the, with the operation, you had the Delta Force guys going in there. You had a CIA team who went into Venezuela beforehand. And was, you know, keeping an eye, knowing where would Nicolas Maduro, where would Maduro be?

• 40:54Danny Jones?

  They allegedly had someone that was really close to Maduro, right? Like, they recruited somebody inside his very inner circle.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, there, there's, there's accusations floating around. And now you see his vice president is now, you know, is now the president. And then there's photos with her and Trump and, you know, she's, so, you know, so. Uh, but what's the story there? So like, but they, they, they got the, the information. And this team went in. And they, they, they, they had the, uh, various planes went off from aircraft carriers. And from locations in the Caribbean, a big, big buildup of force. And they took out Venezuelan air defenses.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  And then they got the Delta Force team went in there. Now, most of the Venezuelan military didn't fight.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  They're like, why die in this? And the people who really fought was an elite squad of Cuban. Uh, like, Nicolas Maduro was very close to Cuba. He, he, he'd done, uh, uh, you know, training within Cuba. He was very close to the, to the government in Havana.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And the, uh, the Cubans were stood in fight. And the, the Delta Force went in there. Now, there, there was one testimony that came from a Venezuelan officer who was watching this. And he said it was like, these guys were like, you know, he described it was a lot of aliens. They'd come in there, they're like, they seem to be firing like, you know, a hundred bullets a second. We just don't know what they're doing, they're coming left, right and center, we, you know. Um, and, and we just, you know, we just, everyone's just dropping down.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  You know, there was talk about one, Trump mentioned a weapon that they used, which was some kind of weapon, which might have been something to disable their weapons.

• 42:58Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Some kind of sonic thing to disable their weapons. But I think there was, there was some kind of tech used exactly, or I don't know how much, you know, these, these testimonies are really true. Or in no seconds, what are you seeing?

• 43:08Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  But, but, you know, but they went in there without taking a casualty. And they took out, you know, they killed a hundred or so people in, in Venezuela. And, and took out Maduro. So it was, it was a higher risk operation, a high stakes operation. Um, from the administration point of view, they feel it was a big success. They took out, they cut off the head of the snake and took out this guy without going to war in Venezuela.

• 43:32Danny Jones?

  Did they really take out the head of the snake, though, if the vice president's now in power? Has anything changed?

• 43:37Speaker 01

  For a lot of the Venezuelan people, it hasn't. And it was interesting, you know, right after, you know. It was a clearly authoritarian regime in Venezuela. And, uh, you know, I went back there, I went, I went in there in 2016.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  I, I went there three times, uh, 2012, 2015, 2016. When I initially went there, I was actually sympathetic. Okay, maybe, you know, these, these people who are like, and this is, this is Hugo Chavez. And they wanna, you know, bring some equality to this country. You know, maybe, maybe they're trying to make, you know, things fairer, give a, give a shake to their people, to their country. But I saw on the trips how bad things got. And by my last trip, I saw that people were malnourished and starving. You had seven million people leave Venezuela between 2015 and, and, and like 2022, 23. Uh, more than Syria even leaving because people were just hungry.

• 44:37Danny Jones?

  Where were they going?

• 44:38Speaker 01

  A lot of them headed to the United States, a lot of them ended up Colombia, uh, Peru, Mexico, Spain, anywhere they could. One of the scenes I saw there, you had a collapse of the country. A collapse of the economy and a collapse of the whole system.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  And one of the scenes I saw was I went into a holding cell

• 45:02Speaker 01

  in a, a police station to look at some of the, the prisoners who were being held there. And it was meant to be a holding cell where they're in for 36 hours and have a maximum of 36 people.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  And I went in there and it was crammed bodies, upon body. Like completely rammed up, like 140 people or so in there.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  And I was like, wow, this, you know, these, these are pretty bad conditions. Like, how long have you been like this for? And then one of them was like, seven months.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  One of them was like, two years.

• 45:40Danny Jones?

  Jesus Christ.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  And I was like, is anybody here sick? Then one of them was like, tuberculosis. And then one of them was like, HIV.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  And then I was like, and I was like, how do you, how do you guys use the toilet?

• 45:55Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  It's like we're just pissing bags, shitting bags, hang them up here. Uh, we, uh, and I, I was like, how do you stay sane? I mean, like, you're, you're, you're rammed like that for like months on end, you can't even move. And it was like, now your mind just goes, in these conditions, your mind, you know, your mind just goes. I was like in shock seeing, seeing these guys.

• 46:19Danny Jones?

  Oh my God.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  In, in, in, in the prison there. And then, um, the reason is because it was kind of a collapse and the, the whole system just was not moving, the whole kind of, and, and, uh. So, anyway, so, yeah, so things were, things were terrible there in, in Venezuela. And there's many, many stories about how bad things were in Venezuela. And just sort of just generally this, this system was not working. Now, that was 2016. And, and I was also, there'd be like, everyone be lining up for food, these kind of food packages. And then you'd go there with their lining up and then there'd be a big, you know, some food would arrive in a truck and everyone would go on a riot to try and get it. And I thought, well, they're not gonna last the summer, this government's not gonna last the summer.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  And yet, you know, they were still there and, you know, eight years later. Because Maduro was clever about staying in power.

• 47:10Danny Jones?

  Right. What do, what do you know, if anything, about that whole voting machine scandal tied to Venezuela?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I don't know, honestly, I, I, I, I don't, I don't know. Like, like the accusation that, that was used in the 2020 election.

• 47:31Danny Jones?

  In the US, right?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  I, I haven't seen the evidence. I think, I think from my understand, I think that was thrown out. I think the court, you know, didn't find, uh, didn't find the, the, the evidence that was, you know, but I don't know enough about it.

• 47:44Danny Jones?

  I, I did hear that there was some legitimacy, I believe I either read this in an article, somebody might have even told me on the podcast. Oh yeah, that was Ralph Pizzula who told us this, that those voting machines, um, are used but primarily in South American countries for elections and stuff like that. Not necessarily to steal the votes, but to make it easier for people to vote. And to centralize the whole voting thing, which by design makes fraud way easier.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I know it's, it's a very corrupt, violent government in Venezuela and it continues to be now.

• 48:22Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Uh, when I was leaving from that trip, so I was, I'd, uh, you know, seen all this kind of crazy stuff. Uh, you know, all of these, you know, I've been around, had all these tapes and, and, and photographs. And I'm getting into the airport and I line up to, to check in. And these military guys come, they say, can we talk, you give me your passport.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  The guy grabs my passport and then they go, come with us. And I'm like, he's wandering off of my passport and has to follow them to this place. So first thing I'll go, here's, here's the political police and they're going to find out all the, all the stuff I've got and, you know, I could be in trouble here and not leave Venezuela with this material.

• 49:09Danny Jones?

  Oh my god.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  And I walk into a room and they're anti-drug people, so I have a relief. And I'm flying into Colombia. So like, I think, okay, well, no, no, no one smuggled drugs, smuggles drugs in Colombia.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  And they're looking through my stuff.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  And they don't really, they're looking, they're, they're, they're looking for drugs, but they're kind of half-heartedly looking. And they don't really seem to care that much. And then they say, uh, okay, uh, then there's, there's two male soldiers and a female soldier.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  And they say, uh, are you, uh, you, uh, what'd you think about this girl here? She's cute, yeah?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  So I say, she's, she's very beautiful.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  You want to take her to your country? Take her back to your country.

• 49:55Danny Jones?

  Your country, meaning what?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in England, I've got a British passport, yeah. So, so I said, uh, I just said, I think in my country, they'd say she's very beautiful. I kind of think I'm being kind of clever. And then she says to me, what flight are you on? Said, I'm on the, you know, the four twenty to Mexico via Colombia. And she says, if you want to get your flight, shut the fuck up.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  I said, look, sorry, I wasn't meaning to disrespect you. I just am in a kind of weird situation here. Anyway, so they, they, they, they, they let me, they let me go and I check in, think, oh, that's a relief. I'm getting out of here. And then I'm about to get on my flight. And, uh, I hear over the, over the channel, over the speaker, yo, angry yo, tiene que hablar con la policía. Whatever he had, like, yo, you have to go and talk to the Venezuelan police, the Bolivarian police. And they pull me out again, just about to get my flight.

• 50:51Danny Jones?

  Oh my god.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  And they take me downstairs. And they say, we're going to, they bring out my bag, which I've already checked in. And they say, we're going to check, we're going to search this in front of you. And I think, well, you, you could have, you know, you could have stuck a kilo of cocaine or whatever in it now, between that, like now. And they just check it in front of me. And they say, we don't find it, you, you can get on your plane and go. And they, they're just, they're just messing with me. Then I, I leave, I leave Venezuela and when my story finally comes out, uh, for Time Magazine, and it makes a front page on Time Magazine, the story has a headline, Venezuela is dying. And we have.

• 51:27Danny Jones?

  What was the title of it?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Venezuela is dying. And you can, uh, you can see the, say, Time, uh, cover Venezuela is dying. And when it came out and we had photographs from inside the prison and, and photographs about all the situation. And then when it, when that came out, they then, the Venezuelan government then, put me, they had a TV show attacking me and attacking the story.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  And they said, who does he work for? Does he work for the DEA or the drug cartels? And had kind of photographs of me and it had the whole machinery attacking me. Uh, but I was, I was out of Venezuela at that time, so I didn't, I didn't really care too much.

• 52:05Danny Jones?

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• 52:50Danny Jones?

  And for a limited time only, our listeners are getting 10% off their order when they use our exclusive link. Just head to hexclad.com/dannyjones. Support our show and check them out at H E X C L A D dot com forward slash Danny Jones. And make sure to let them know we sent you. I got to imagine that really takes a toll on you, dealing with that kind of shit 24/7 or reporting on that kind of stuff and putting yourself in these kind of situations for this long. Does he, does it give you like, any kind of PTSD or has it changed your sort of like outlook on life at all? Or what is that like for you?

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, sure. And I've had worse situations, uh, and I've had situations where people point guns at me and, and, and different situations.

• 53:37Danny Jones?

  Have you ever been kidnapped?

• 53:39Speaker 01

  I've been taken, yeah. Uh, some of these, some of these, uh, yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  I've been taken at gunpoint and moved around in vehicles and that kind of thing.

• 53:50Danny Jones?

  Where was this?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Something's happened in Mexico.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Somebody's still quite sensitive to talk about. Um, I've had various situations in, in, in Mexico with, with things happening there.

• 54:08Danny Jones?

  You can't, you can't talk too much about stuff because you still live in Mexico, obviously. So.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of the stuff, because there's, there's threats involved and, and there's, there's certain people involved who are still out there.

• 54:18Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  To give a lot of details about, I can tell a lot of stories, but some, they'll be a bit careful about some of these things. But like, uh, in terms of you, what you asked about the toll it has on me.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, it, it does.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Both, you know, when you're in situations and you're like pumped full of adrenaline.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  And when you're, you know, fearing for your life or just fearing for a moment, then afterwards, uh, you have, I guess that's what trauma is, some of that post-traumatic stress is where you have, you've had like heavy kind of adrenaline buildup. And then sometimes you kind of find it hard to deal with that. So you maybe get anxious about dumb stuff because you've been in situations. Or also just dealing with, with being, with people who are carrying very heavy things. So it might not be me, but there's people who, who tell me about,

• 55:22Speaker 01

  how they've decapitated people or how they've eaten people like cannibalistic rituals. Or if, uh, you know, they've, you know, the murders they've done and this kind of thing, decapitating people that are still alive.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Happy to tell those stories, those stories about some of those cases. So like you're carrying what they're carrying as well. And then also it's, it's seeing how people have suffered as well, seeing people who have like an immense suffering. People who have had their parent, their kids disappeared.

• 55:53Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  People who have had, um,

• 55:58Speaker 01

  you know, people who, who have watched their people, their, they, you know, their family members be taken away from them. So all of these things, yeah, all of it affects you and affects, uh, kind of.

• 56:10Danny Jones?

  Do you have any like special ways of dealing with it? Like what the fuck do you do? Do you have to go on like, do like crazy hardcore, like long runs or do you like, what do you do to sort of like mitigate that kind of stress?

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Meditation now. Yeah, I try meditation, prayer. Uh, I, I kind of become more, um, religious, I think, or more spiritual.

• 56:35Danny Jones?

  Is that reset?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I kind of over the years.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Like I said, with some of these situations, when you're in a situation, you know, you, when, if you really think you could be gone, then you, you know, you turn, turn to God. Um, I think a lot of people, you know, when it really comes to it, even if you might be atheists in that moment, you know, things change. But other things as well, it's like, if, if you talk about like trying to understand,

• 57:04Speaker 01

  like how,

• 57:08Speaker 01

  if you look at some of these cartel guys, when they do what they do.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  If you talk about the cannibalism, that was a ritual. Now, this, this is, is very documented.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  There was a, a case in the United States of Heno, Heno Garcia Luna.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  And Heno Garcia Luna was, uh, the former Mexican head of public security.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  And he was charged in the United States on drug trafficking.

• 57:45Danny Jones?

  This guy's like federal level?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was like a security minister. He was like one of the top guys in the Mexican government.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  He was, he was, his trial was in two thousand twenty-three in New York. He served as a minister, he served as first head of the AFI, and then he was head of the Mexican Public Security Secretary from two thousand six to two thousand twelve. I interviewed him in two thousand five. He, you know, he, he, he was on trial and they had various witnesses. Now, one of the things the defense tries to do is trash the witnesses. You know, you have cartel guys who become witnesses. So in this case, there was a guy called El Grande. They also talked about a guy called La Barbie as well, and we're gonna have him, who's a Texan, a guy from Laredo, Texas, kind of light-skinned Hispanic guy with blonde hair.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  He didn't end up witnessing, but he was on, he was on the roster, maybe to, to witness. And El Grande, and they,

• 58:47Speaker 01

  the, the judge ruled that the prosecution, the defense, defense cannot ask them about acts of cannibalism because it didn't want to prejudice the jury by showing these guys as being cannibals. Now, the reason is because there's a drug trafficker, Arturo Beltranleva,

• 59:10Speaker 01

  who was a, a major drug trafficker in, in Mexico, was eventually shot dead by the Mexican Marines in two thousand nine. And he had cannibalistic rituals where he'd get people to eat human flesh with him. Now, part of that is like, um, you know, why do you do that? Why do you get someone to eat human flesh? It's like, well, you know, he was into a lot of santeria, kind of weird spiritual stuff. But it's about, I think in some ways, crossing a line, it's going to a dark side. And it's like, what is, you know, how, how do you get people to be, you know, to

• 59:54Speaker 01

  um, decapitate people when they're still alive?

• 59:58Speaker 01

  How do you train someone to do that?

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  And, uh,

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  you know, get people to become, bring out the most evil you can in these people. You know, in some ways, it's kind of metaphorically making a pact with the devil, but sometimes these guys are literally making a pact with the devil.

• 1:00:19Danny Jones?

  So the defense, the judge ruled on their request to not talk about the cannibalistic stuff. Was this guy, who were this guy's, were his lawyers Americans or are they Mexican?

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  His defense lawyer was, was American, um, was, and, and, uh, so the defense lawyer would like to, obviously, when you bring out a witness,

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  if you bring a witness and the witness is telling a story to say, um, this guy, um,

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  I paid this guy money, I paid this guy, I went to this guy and we had a meeting and I paid him ten million dollars to protect the cartel.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  And the defense lawyer could then say, have you ever eaten human flesh? Are you a cannibal?

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Now, if the guy says yes,

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  what should the jury think about this witness the government has brought out? Who's a cannibal? And if he says no, and he's, you know, he's lying, he gets into a lie. So then, but then the prosecutors just said like,

• 1:01:27Danny Jones?

  How should we trust a guy who eats humans?

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  So the prosecutor said to the judge, don't allow them to use this line of questioning because it will prejudice. So the, the, the, the government is using, these are, these are guys who are working with the US government.

• 1:01:42Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  So if you look at this, um, snitch system, like all of these guys who are major cartel guys and then make deal with the, with the US government.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, you look right now, so the Chapitos, who are the sons of El Chapo. Um, you've got Joaquín, um, Guzmán Junior, Joaquín Guzmán López. You've got Ovidio Guzmán.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  And, uh, these guys are working with the, um, US government. They're giving them deals, giving them likes, you know, certain deals where they're gonna work with us to cooperate. And, you know, it's, it's a controversial thing, or it's a questionable thing. The US is making deals with very dangerous guys, with guys who are murderers, with guys who are major fentanyl traffickers, and using them to testify against others.

• 1:02:39Danny Jones?

  Right. Back to this cannibal guy. What, did, did anyone ever do any investigations into why he was practicing this shit? And like, what kind of like weird cult this was a part of?

• 1:02:52Danny Jones?

  Did he ever explain it?

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  So, um,

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  the, like, he was into santeria.

• 1:03:01Danny Jones?

  What is santeria?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  So santeria is a, uh, often, a lot of it's in Cuba, like a certain spiritual practice.

• 1:03:10Danny Jones?

  Can you look this up, Steve?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  San, you remember the, the song, the Sublime song?

• 1:03:15Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Santeria, yeah. So it's, it's a spiritual practice, uh, uh, I believe bought by, like, very Afro-Cuban.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  If you go to Cuba, you see a lot of people who are into santeria, um, there's certain places which kind of centers of that. And you have these different spirits. And there's, I think, within santeria, there's kind of dark sides and light sides. Uh, but some of this was this idea of like eating flesh in ceremonies. You, you have other like, uh, within, within Mexico, kind of dark practices.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  Some connected more to people being Satanists, some to dark sides of santeria. Uh, and you have, you know, where there's like human sacrifices, these kind of things. And, uh,

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  one of the reasons as well is, is like, you, you give people human flesh to eat. Sometimes without even telling them. They'll like, you just serve up food and they'll eat human flesh. You're binding them to you. You're kind of binding them to kind of your power.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Um, one, an interesting,

• 1:04:31Danny Jones?

  This is what they believe.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  I think some of the belief around, around this, you're, you're making people like part of a, um, you know, these people have eaten flesh with you. And like, you know, it's part of a ritual of, you know, they live very strange lives. These, these are guys who, who are living a very high level of power at the top of these organizations. So interesting stories about Arturo Beltranleva.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  The DEA, um, found out the location of, of where he was.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Given to them likely by this guy La Barbie,

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  who was a drug trafficker, uh, brought up in Laredo, Texas, who then went over and became a trafficker in Mexico, worked for this guy Beltranleva, and was likely was the guy who gave the final address of Beltranleva. Barbie was being held here in, in Florida, might still be there in a, in a penitentiary in Florida.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Gave the address of where he was in the city of Cuernavaca, in the Mexican city.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  First of all, the US DEA were trying to work with the Mexican military to get this guy, but the Mexican military were like on this guy's payroll.

• 1:05:47Danny Jones?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  This is, this is, you can see this actually in some of the WikiLeaks, um, documents about the US, um, the US ambassador, remember the WikiLeaks?

• 1:06:00Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of that. Some of this stuff has, has a US communication on this, going back to two thousand nine.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  So the mech, the US were trying to, you know, trying to work with the Mexican military, Mexican military, they believe on this guy's payroll. So they worked with the Mexican Marines, and the Mexican Marines were an elite unit of Mexican military who had a lot of US training. And this, this is an old US tactic of like, we'll try and work closely with military units in different countries, and they kind of become, in some ways, our unit. They're kind of trying this with the Mexican Marines, who are now in a bunch of issues. But, you know, the Mexican Marines are a very, very strong force. The Mexican Marines go in there

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  to where Arturo Beltranleva is, and they go in, there's a big shootout, and they shoot the guy dead.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Now, they also, the Mexican Marines themselves, get the body of Beltranleva, put his pants around his ankles, like decorate it with dollar bills and kind of take photographs. Almost like a humiliation ritual of this.

• 1:07:11Danny Jones?

  Of his dead body.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  After that, then, now, one of the, the people who dies in that is, is a, a Mexican Marine who dies in that gunfight. And the president at the time, Felipe Cadrón, honors this guy, says this is a great hero of the country who died.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  And after that incident, there was, at his, uh, wake in Tabasco,

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  a crew of hitmen went to the wake and murdered a bunch of his family members, his mother, his aunt, his sister of the dead Marine.

• 1:07:48Danny Jones?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Like revenge. So after that, now they don't give, they don't give names now of Mexican military who die in these confrontations.

• 1:07:57Danny Jones?

  Jesus Christ, man.

• 1:08:01Danny Jones?

  It's like a horror movie down there.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  One of the weird things.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Uh, and is that like, I'm telling some of these horrific stories.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  And that also goes alongside the fact that Mexico is this wonderful country. I mean, it sounds, it sounds funny to say that after what I'm saying, but you know, Mexico's a beautiful country, which I love. And you can go to Mexico City and have a wonderful time. And you can go to some of these beach resorts and have a wonderful time. And Mexico lives this weird paradox of this extreme violence alongside, you know, this, you know, growing country and this kind of really, really good country in so many ways. And, you know, for a lot of people you have in Mexico who are living a life completely outside this.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  I mean, you look at Mexico City right now and you're gonna see, you know, Mexico City feel a lot, parts of it feel like New York right now in terms of like beautiful restaurants, beautiful restaurants.

• 1:09:02Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Mexico City right now is buzzing, particularly certain neighbors, the Condesa, the Roma, Nabarte, Napolis, all these neighbors you see, you know, incredible restaurants. Loads of Americans went down there during the pandemic and have stayed down there. So you see these kind of amazing things happening, uh, and also like, you know, like, uh, you know, loads of young people studying, loads of talented young people in Mexico, a lot of things being created there at the same time. And then this violence and how this kind of, this kind of lives, these things live alongside each other. Another crazy story, you had, um, in Veracruz, the biggest mass grave so far they found.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Like, there's been a lot of mass graves found around Mexico of bodies, you know, they were burying bodies of these people they're murdering.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  And there were the biggest mass grave in, in Mexico, uh, was, uh, near the city of Veracruz. And the, um,

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  they found this, there was mothers whose children had disappeared.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Um, you know, in this one case, uh, this, this woman I talked to, her, her son had been taken by gunmen. He worked in customs and she was just searching for his, searching, searching, searching for his body.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  It's been years, you know, you get these groups of mothers and fathers as well.

• 1:10:34Danny Jones?

  Digging through the mass graves.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, just digging around, trying to find out. So it was, it was a Mother's Day, um, and so particularly is, you know, one of these, these times it really hurts on Mother's Day when you're a mother, but your son is gone. And they were having a march on Mother's Day and this car rolls up.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  And this car rolls up and this guy says to them, check out this place here and he gives them like a, a small map, like a hand drawn map. Check out this place.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  And they went there, it was a cow field, they went to this cow field and started digging. And started finding bones in this cow field. And eventually the government took over and they started digging up and they found, uh, the last count was like two hundred and ninety-eight people buried in this place. Now, I went down to this place where it happened and right next to it, you see, um, family homes. Kind of middle class, low middle class family homes, you know, and it's, you know, this building up, so kind of in a places with children's bikes and hoops and that kind of stuff.

• 1:11:41Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  And

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  the family, because they were digging up, there was a stench, a smell of all of the rotting corpses. And the families said, can we do something about this because this smell is drifting into our homes and we're still living here. So you have this side by side, on one side, people hardworking, trying to build lives for themselves. Other side, this kind of horror movie, as you said, a horror movie.

• 1:12:10Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Uh, and you see that across the country, but you know, things like, you know, you'll just find, you know, like all these great things in Mexico at the same time, this real dark side, this violence.

• 1:12:19Danny Jones?

  And so people are just sort of numb to it. It's just one of those things that's kind of like lives there in your subconscious and your psyche. You're aware this is something that happens, but it's not something that's like, you have to stay vigilant about all the time because you're sort of living your life. There's also this great country here, it's a mel- mel- uh, metropolitan area in Mexico City. So it's like, not something that like really stresses you out day to day.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  So you have to, you know, Mexico's a country of a hundred and thirty million people.

• 1:12:48Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  And you'll have people like in Mexico City, like in many of the cities, and their lives are not directly touched by this. So they're, you know, they're living their life, they're worried about, you know, studying or working, you know, family. Now they'll see this, some of this stuff on the news, this will be on the news pretty much every day, there's some kind of cartel thing on the news every day.

• 1:13:10Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Uh, but they're, they're not living directly, it's not affecting them directly. So something they see on the news like, you know, you can see it on the news in the United States. Uh, and then you have, uh, people who are living in areas that are affected by this, but are not directly involved. But it is affecting, um, if you look at Sinaloa right now, you have a, a civil war between two factions of the cartel. So the Chapitos and the, uh, uh, Mayos. And they're fighting, these groups are fighting. So for a long time, you had people not taking their kids to school because of gunfights happening.

• 1:13:50Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  So they're not, they're not directly involved, you know, but they, they're, they're very concerned about, okay, there could be gunfights. Now you've got like these, you know, WhatsApp groups and there might be, might be suddenly a lot of these gunfights happening in this area. There's, we can see convoys moving around this area.

• 1:14:08Danny Jones?

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  In some times, you know, I, I covered the, the, these different turf wars in Sinaloa. And the turf war in two thousand eight to two thousand eleven, and then the more recent turf war. And in some ways, being more aware of all these things actually makes the psychological impact of it worse. Uh, meaning that back in two thousand eight, nine, you know, you didn't have like WhatsApp groups of all the, you know, every immediate things of there's a convoy moving around this area, there's a gunfight in this area. And yet all this violence happening and people were a bit more like carrying on their lives, a bit less concerned about the impact.

• 1:14:48Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  And now people are much more aware of wherever, you know, there's, there's, there's movements, there's like, you know, there is this kind of real, when I first, uh, when I flew up there, right, as civil, as this cartel civil war broke out in September two thousand twenty-four. And, uh, uh, uh, there's one woman and she was saying, oh, my, my stomach's all messed up. I'm hearing all these gunfights and my stomach's all messed up and, and I'm just really concerned about things. And I was just thinking, oh, well, you know, she can't handle it. Couple of days later, I was the same, I was like, my stomach was all messed up and I was just like, you know, a bag of nerves going around. Um, and, and there's, you know, you kind of feel this kind of psychological stress of the city living under this kind of violence.

• 1:15:30Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  But then there's, there's a whole bunch of stuff in between there as that as well. You've got cities like, I'm in Jalisco right now, Guadalajara right now. So you've got a kind of city which is still functioning, but then you've got a lot of people who've got bad stories about people who have disappeared there. Um, and you've got forced recruitment, um, of, of cartels, uh, which is, which is horrific. I mean, if you think about some of these turf wars, if you look at Sinaloa,

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  there's been, um, thousands of murders, thousands of disappearances and not found, so presumed dead in the last two years. With these two cartel factions fighting each other.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  So that's happening, it's like, how do you get people to fight? You know, it's, it, it, there's a lot of people who want to be gangsters, a lot of people who want to be drug traffickers and have money and have nice cars and have beautiful girlfriends and all of these things.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  But how do you get people to go into gunfights or to attack the military? You know, or, or some of these things where there's a very, very high chance of dying.

• 1:16:34Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  So you recruit people

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  and you, you know, you, you kidnap people and you force them to become hitmen.

• 1:16:44Danny Jones?

  Who's their target? Who's like their prime candidate to kidnap, to recruit to the cartel?

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Young men like eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, this kind of age. Um, you see, there's a lot of Jalisco, so, and there's one father, uh, you know, very brave guy, this, this, this guy whose, whose son was kidnapped. And the last information he had, uh, was that he had been in a house where they were doing forced recruitment.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  And he said state police were involved in the kidnapping as well.

• 1:17:14Danny Jones?

  Oh my god.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Kidnapping. And this guy, you know, you, you talk, I talked to this guy and I was, you know, but it's talking again, talking about the, you, you, you feel their pain of these people. I was, you know, I, I was holding back tears, talking to him, I don't want to be crying in front of people I'm interviewing. But I was holding back tears, talking to him, uh, describing how his only son had been taken. And he had this, this, this, um, bad skin condition.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  And I said, you know, what, what's, what's up with the, the, the, the skin thing? He said, that, that happened after my son was kidnapped, just the, the, the stress and the pain. Um, you know, it comes out physically. Um, you know, and it had, I thought, I thought he had like burns, I thought he had like physical burns on his face. But it was just that the stress of your son having been kidnapped and taken away and you're living with that. You know, and as any kind of parent, you just, how can you go through that and imagine that? And the last thing I knew is, is, and, and, and he's, you know, hasn't, it's still like, like in the case of that mother in Veracruz I was saying about, that mass grave they discovered, she eventually found her son identified in that mass grave. Took another like two years after finding the mass grave.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  But it's very important having that closure because one of the worst things is not having closure. If your son has been kidnapped and you, um, don't know where they are, you've got no closure and you're constantly thinking, are they there?

• 1:18:40Danny Jones?

  Worried about them, where could they be? You don't know the answer, but if you can think like, okay, at least I know for a fact my son is gone. I can kind of put this out of my mind now and yeah, that, that makes sense.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Danny Jones?

  That's fucking terrible.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Danny Jones?

  Oh my god, man.

• 1:19:00Danny Jones?

  What, what do you think like high level could be the answer to this thing? Like, it doesn't seem like the United States has any incentive to stop it. This just seems like, from what I have heard, that they're using the cartels to their advantage in whatever way they can. And, you know, obviously, we've all heard stories of how the CIA has been embedded down there forever, since at least the eighties. And, you know, corruption happening with them working together with the cartels to achieve whatever objectives they're aiming towards. But like, you hear people float around the idea of legalizing drugs in the United States.

• 1:19:44Danny Jones?

  Maybe that would have a huge effect on the cartels. But then, you know, you hear about the human trafficking side of things, and then how they're getting their hands into legitimate industries, like, security, so you know, security, running security for, you know, car manufacturing factories down there, or like Chinese mineral mining down there, like the lithium mines and stuff like that. Seems like they've gotten their hands into like the legitimate industries that exist that are doing business with like big governments and stuff like that. And not only that, just like, looking beyond the scope of just the United States, how, I've learned recently how China has been getting, basically using the cartels to buy

• 1:20:28Danny Jones?

  up land in the United States, because the law in China is that you can invest more than $50,000 a year outside of China or into the United States. So what they're doing is they're paying the Mexican cartels all this money, and using the Mexican cartels sort of as like a money launderer to get the cartels to buy them land in the US, and they'll do business with the cartels in exchange for that. So it's just like, their tentacles spread so far, it's almost like, it's so deep rooted, I can't fathom any way to fix the problem.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  So what you mentioned before, I think is very true about the, so some of the CIA links going back.

• 1:21:09Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  And I think beyond the CIA, you had a situation, you know, with the United States war on drugs, going all the way back, you know, all the way back to the 1940s, you go back to World War II, when the US Navy Intelligence started making a deal with the American mob, and Lucky Luciano. And initially, the, you know, it was called Operation Underworld.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  And the initial thing was to find out who are the, you know, where are the German spies infiltrating the New York waterfront? And they couldn't get to the waterfront, because it was mostly Italians on the waterfront, and the Italians didn't want to speak to the, to the US Navy Intelligence. And so they went through Lucky Luciano, and Lucky Luciano started giving them intelligence. Then they used Lucky Luciano to help with the invasion of Sicily in World War II, and get mafia contacts in Sicily to help US forces with the invasion.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Now, Lucky Luciano, we think about the American mob, okay, well, these are, these are gangsters, but they're not drug traffickers.

• 1:22:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  And, you know, the scene in The Godfather where they says like, you know, I don't want to sell drugs, that's all bullshit, you know, these guys are massively involved in drug trafficking. A lot of the Lucky Luciano afterwards really helped create the whole heroin networks. Then you start seeing here, like, the attempts to kill Fidel Castro, Operation Mongoose, talking about cutting the head off the snake, Operation Mongoose, started working with the mob. You had Myelansky, little man, all the, all the casinos.

• 1:23:06Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  In Cuba. In Cuba. He gets run out there by Fidel Castro, so he wants to try and kill him as well, so you start, you know, seeing them, and you see these guys getting immunity with, you know, they say, well, okay, they'll just, we'll just ask them for some help, but they won't want anything in return. But these gangsters, these narcos are smart, they go, okay, fine, if a US government comes to me for help, I'll give them some help, and of course, I'm gonna get something in return. You know, you can see, you know, then you can start helping me with some cases.

• 1:23:40Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  And so forth. They even, you know, they started using them in World War II, where you started having trade union agitators, it was like, well, we don't want trade union agitators right now, we've got the war effort, so we can get the mob guys to also help us with that. Then these guys, so you see this alliance is old, it goes into the Vietnam War. And, you know, right through, so you see the US government compromising, you know, or in Afghanistan. And how does Afghanistan become the biggest heroin producer in the world under allied occupation? Or under, under NATO occupation? And then, who do we work with to take out, you know?

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  And again, some of these things are tough decisions, you know, they're like, you want to take out Al Qaeda? And Al Qaeda, horrific people, they've, they attacked the United States, they're murdering Americans. But then if the guys you work with to take them out also have to be heroin traffickers. But it's like, in that moment, it was like, well, we want to take out Al Qaeda, out of Afghanistan, who will work with these guys? But you see, all the way going back, this compromise happening. And then we talked about the deals, you know, like more recently, okay, you're gonna make a deal with the Chapitos.

• 1:24:56Danny Jones?

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• 1:25:39Danny Jones?

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• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Another very interesting case, if you've followed it at all, is the kidnapping of El Mayo.

• 1:26:21Danny Jones?

  Oh yeah, that is very interesting.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's, okay, so that, that case, so then...

• 1:26:27Danny Jones?

  So El Mayo started the Sinaloa cartel, is that right?

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, so basically, like a lot of these cartels, they're, they're organizations or drug trafficking networks that come about organically. I interviewed Carlos Leyda, who was one of the main, considered the founder of the Medellin cartel, one of the main people, I interviewed him in, in Colombia. And he described, you know, how the cartel was established, the Medellin cartel.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  It was a, a bunch of different traffickers, who each created their own office, they called them, where they'd move drugs from Colombia to the United States, and they charged people $5,000 to $7,000 a kilo. And there was a bunch of these offices, something like 28 offices they had, and it was the DEA and the American government said, we're gonna call them the Medellin cartel. So there's basically 28, you know, you've got different traffickers, you know, like say you have the Danny Jones trafficking organization, and the Joe Rogan trafficking organization, we're gonna call them, the podcast mafia, we're gonna, we're gonna call them a cartel.

• 1:27:40Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  So often, sometimes, these are networks of drug, they're real, they're real networks of drug traffickers, but often they're baptized by prosecutors wanting to build cases.

• 1:27:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  Now, El Mayo, Ismail El Mayo Zambada, so he, in Sinaloa, you have a history of one century, more than one century of drug trafficking from the state of Sinaloa. So Sinaloa is a bit like to the Mexican cartels, like Sicily is to the Italian mafia. So this is considered the kind of the, the cradle of the narcos, like Sicily is to the mafia.

• 1:28:18Danny Jones?

  Got it.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  So you have, in Sinaloa, these people moving, you know, in fact, all the way, all the way back, you had Chinese migrants who came to Sinaloa to work in mines and in railroads, and they were planting opium. So you had opium grown in Sinaloa, going, you know, right back to the late 19th century, early 20th century, and then you had a bunch of people growing opium there. There's credible accusation that in World War II, the United States military went to Sinaloa to buy opium to use for morphine for troops in World War II.

• 1:29:03Danny Jones?

  Oh wow.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  Going again to these like links you have. Then El Mayo emerges there, so he's older than El Chapo.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  And El Mayo emerges there in Sinaloa. And one of his very early connections, in fact, was a curious Cuban guy. Who was accused of being CIA or Cuban intelligence. One of the early connections he had, who was moving the drugs of Mozambique. Like right back in the nineteen seventies into the United States. But El Mayo manages to go for fifty years without being arrested. So incredible for any, you know, most drug traffickers, you know, the last five years.

• 1:29:52Danny Jones?

  A hell of a streak.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So right from, I mean, even more, he begins around like sixty eight or something. And he's finally arrested in like twenty twenty four. So it's like fifty six years. He begins in cocaine around nineteen eighty, before it was marijuana. Then it begins in like cocaine in a big way in like nineteen eighty and then moves huge amounts of cocaine overseas, moving huge amounts of cocaine. So a lot of people, because Mayo was the big kingpin. And so the Sinaloa cartel was El Mayo, El Chapo. People started using the words Sinaloa cartel, the phrase around two thousand and six.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Before that, they used to call it the federation, the federation of drug traffickers. Uh, but like the Sinaloa cartel, he was, you know, him and El Chapo were the two most senior partners, the most powerful people, but you had various people.

• 1:30:49Danny Jones?

  Didn't Chapo start out as like a super low level, like hitman type guy?

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  He began like cutting opium.

• 1:30:57Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  You know, I went to his village called La Tuna, which is his village in the mountains. Talked to his mother, sat through an evangelical Christian service before I interviewed his mother.

• 1:31:08Danny Jones?

  Wow, when was this?

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Two thousand, but right before his trial, like two thousand eighteen.

• 1:31:14Danny Jones?

  Holy shit.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I went up, his mother, she's died now, his mother's died. But like, it's like a long way up into the mountains. So you have, you have, in Sinaloa, you have, Culiacan is the state capital.

• 1:31:27Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Then you go to a town called Batrago, which is the municipal head of where Chapo is from.

• 1:31:33Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  But then you go up a couple of hours into the mountains, um, to a little village called La Tuna. And you see, you see guys, you know, there's a lot of gunmen around those mountains. You know, you see guys and they'll, you know, they'll, they'll let you, they can, someone you just wave at them. They let you through the guys with, you know, rifles and radios. We arrive, we will go there, we stay with a cousin of our chapel. I mean, basically it's a small village and everyone's related. And he, he's funny, he's an evangelical Christian, they're evangelical Christians. So when we went up there, I said, like, let's bring like, you know, bring some steak up.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Offer them some steak for a cookout and bring, you know, a good bottle of whiskey or rum, a bottle of liquor. So we arrived there, I said, with a colleague who had already had contact up there. He said, oh, can we stay at your house? Oh, yeah, sure. You stay here with us. I'll hear some, hear some meat to cook up. Oh, great. And I brought out the bottle of booze and he said, no, thanks. We're a Christian family.

• 1:32:37Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  So, so, no, but we.

• 1:32:41Danny Jones?

  We do enough butchering of people. We don't need to add any booze onto our conscience.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  So I knew I needed for the story to have, you know, at least some kind of interview with Chapo's mom. It was like, how do you, you know, we could just, you know, knock on the door. It's difficult, you know, you know, she's got a bunch of gunmen protecting her. So we went to the service on the, on the, on the Sunday. And sat through a three hour service and during the service, uh, the, in the, uh, so then the, the, the, the, the minister was overseeing the service. I said, oh, we've got some guests here, you know, where are you from? Oh, yeah, from England. And there's a photographer here from the United States and thanks for being here and like, you know. And after the service, you know, I could approach a chapo's mother and talk to her. Not obviously be too aggressive in the questioning. She has a bunch of gunmen around.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  But like, you know, get some quotes that I could use for the story. And, you know, and asking her how, but yeah, but he began, she was talking about how when he was eleven years old, he would, you know, walk around the mountains with, he was a very hardworking guy always and walk around the mountains with a, with a sack of oranges, selling them to the farmers. And she said, like, you know, he's always puts on a brave face. But he said, he said himself, I think he was, he was, he began when he was like fifteen, like in the fields, um, cutting opium, you know, like, so I've been to some of these fields where they, where they have opium in Mexico. In a very beautiful poppy and they have a, a certain like blade, like a knife with two blades.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  Which they use to scrape the bulbs of the poppies. And they get into, again, they scrape those and they put them into like a tin. And you smell the tin, so the opium gum, and you smell the tin, it's actually kind of fruity smell. It smells kind of nice.

• 1:34:36Danny Jones?

  Huh.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  And that's why they make the gum, which they then convert to heroin. But going back to El Mayo, so, uh, what's, you have in Sinaloa, these various powerful trafficking families. So you have El Chapo, you know, his sons and also his brother, El Juano, and his different, you know, people in the Guzman family. And the Zambada family, they're the two most powerful families, but also you have a bunch of other families. You have a guy called El Chapo Isidro. You have a guy, um, uh, Cabrera Sarabia, Los Paredes. Caro Quintero, Caro Quintero's families, they're still around. So you have a bunch of other families as well. And this is like the Sinaloa cartel, we call it Sinaloa cartel, is a kind of network of all these different trafficking families.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  Now, El Mayo, in, on July, uh, two thousand twenty four. So he's, he's been a trafficker for some fifty six years. And suddenly this guy appears in an airport in New Mexico, close to El Paso. And this plane lands and suddenly the news is El Mayo has been arrested. It's like, how? And how has he landed in a plane in the United States?

• 1:35:59Danny Jones?

  The story was he turned himself in?

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  So initially people are immediately saying, well, this guy must have turned himself in. A lot of people who have, you know, serious journalists who have covered this for a long time. Initially I thought, well, yeah, maybe this guy's turned himself in. Because, um, you know, how could this guy who seems to have been protected for years, he wants to be arrested? But then the story comes out leaked. He was fooled onto a plane, like also on the same plane as him is one of El Chapo's sons. Joaquin Guzman Lopez or Joaquin Guzman Junior.

• 1:36:36Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  It's on the same plane. And a pilot who we think is a guy called El Jando. And there's a lot of very interesting things about the whole operation to take. Yes, that's, that's Guzman's son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez.

• 1:36:51Danny Jones?

  Okay. A Beechcraft?

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:54Danny Jones?

  Not even like a nice jet?

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  No, no, that's El Mayo, come off the plane.

• 1:36:58Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  Now, there's a lot of interesting story about this plane and I can get into some of the intelligence around this, around this plane. So then.

• 1:37:04Danny Jones?

  You would think he would have a nicer plane.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah.

• 1:37:08Danny Jones?

  For a billionaire.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  There's a big backstory around this. Okay. So then the story is comes out, first of all, being leaked by American agents to big media saying, oh, actually this guy was tricked onto the plane to go and see some air, some Afghanistan airstrips.

• 1:37:28Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  And flown against his will to the United States. It was like suddenly tricked, tricked to be handed to the United States. Now, this immediately didn't make any sense to me.

• 1:37:36Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  It's like, this guy is above a level of having to go and check out airstrips. You know, he's godfather level. He oversees deals, but he doesn't need to go and check out airstrips.

• 1:37:46Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  And also he's not dumb and like, where's his security?

• 1:37:49Danny Jones?

  Right, I'm sure he has his own personal pilot, armed security, he has like specific planes he'll only travel on, like.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  So then I got a call from, from a guy I work with who had a testimony from a head of security, one of his, a former head of security of El Mayo, who was in prison. Who talked to the guy in prison and said like, this guy's been, he was kidnapped. Um, he was tricked into going to a meeting. And all of his, um.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  Bodyguards were murdered. And they got a bunch of details about the meeting. And he was taken against his, beaten and taken against his word to the United States. I was like, well, that's a crazy story. If we publish this now, it's going to be kind of crazy.

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  And then his lawyer, Frank Perez, his lawyer gave a very, very short statement where he confirmed. Also said he'd been kidnapped without giving details. And then I also talked to a Sinaloa cartel, a Chapitos guy. In Sonora, he said everyone there was talking that it was about, it was a trick by the Chapitos to kidnap this guy. So I went ahead and published it. On the Monday, this first kind of big, a bigger account of this.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  And basically, pretty much everything that he told us turned out to be true. In this, this initial thing, which again, a lot of people first of all said, oh, you know, it's not true, you know, you know, this is all like, you're doing this like Netflix. Drama you're saying, it turned out basically it was true. And it's since then been proven. Uh, Joaquin Guzman Lopez admitted to this, confessed to this, confessed to be involved in the kidnapping. Now, how did the kidnapping take place? So. They fooled El Mayo to come to this meeting. By saying, uh, you're going to meet with the governor of Sinaloa, this guy who's now. Been indicted.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  So, uh, um, Ruben Rochamoya. And other players from the Chapitos, you're going to come to a meeting to oversee. Uh, disputes that are happening in the state. And so as a godfather level, you go to a meeting to like, I can, you know, he's, he's very known for being able to calm disputes. You have two people fighting. That's how he survived so long in the game is like. Um, you have two people warring, this guy will come and you're like, no, you know, you got you, you, let's calm this. You know, let, let, let, let, let's squash the beef.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  So he goes to this meeting.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  And he, he, he goes in there with, now, he moves around with quite a small team, but most of the time. The cartel guys, even though they can command hundreds or thousands of, of guys with guns. They move around with fairly small teams. Cause if you move around with a convoy of 50 people. People know, but they move around in small, you know, like often like two vehicles, but they have.

• 1:40:39Danny Jones?

  Try to be covert.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  Try to be covert, but also they have enormous amounts of police on their payroll. So they're also, you know, be able to control this situation.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  He goes to this meeting. As soon as he goes in. He's beaten, he's forced onto this airplane and flown to the United States.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  Now.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  More recently, it's kind of crazy. So the, the, the United States claimed. Now, this was mostly, it seems, an FBI operation.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  To work with. Joaquin Guzman Lopez and the Chapitos to take El Mayo and bring him into US custody.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Now, they, they said, oh, basically, you know, they just phoned us up. And said, can we, can we land in the United States in an airplane? And hand in this guy? And we said, yes. Now that seems so unlikely. What they're trying to do is say, well, we're not, um, involved in a kidnapping in Mexico. And in working with one part of a drug cartel. To kidnap another and bring them to the United States. However, they then put on display. In a museum next to the airfield, that aircraft.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  With a plaque saying, this was a daring operation.

• 1:42:15Speaker 01

  By American federal agents to kidnap this guy.

• 1:42:21Danny Jones?

  They put the airplane on display?

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they, it's on, it's on display in, in New Mexico. You can go and see it now. It's kind of crazy. Now, obviously they don't care that much. It's, it's, it's a big deal because within Mexico, it's like, uh, US agents can't operate in Mexico. US agents are in Mexico. We've got, the CIA agents are there. There's controversy about what they can do. If you saw the story, two CIA agents died in Mexico in April. April 22nd, two CIA agents died in Chihuahua. Yes, this is.

• 1:42:51Danny Jones?

  This is the display.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  It's the plane, yeah.

• 1:42:53Danny Jones?

  Inside, oh my God. They even like polished up the plane?

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes. They, they put it there and, and you could see that the plaque there, they had a, a plaque where they, where they, where they talk about this.

• 1:43:02Danny Jones?

  15 million dollar reward.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they talk about this. So they, they, they, they talk about this operation.

• 1:43:09Danny Jones?

  That's crazy.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  There's, there's, there's an interesting guy who, um, a former, uh, New Jersey, uh, police, uh, captain. Who I talked to recently.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  Uh, Joe Heffernan. Who did a good investigation into looking at the, how this, this plane. He said, basically. It, it had the tail number. Which is, you know, all to do with, you know, how planes can move around, you have, you know, like, you know, you have, you have information through radar and stuff. Had been doubly cloned.

• 1:43:47Danny Jones?

  What does that mean?

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  So basically it was, there was three planes with that same tail number. One registered to a company in, in New Mexico. One moving around Brazil and this one. What he believes there had to be deeper federal involvement, US federal involvement. To have that operation as well. Now, one of the things that the source, uh, told us in the first story that I published, and I was careful about publishing this.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  Uh, initially and throwing this accusation around, but the guy said.

• 1:44:24Danny Jones?

  Which guy?

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  The, the, the former head of security, Felt Mayo. He said. He was talking about this kidnapping. He said. Nuestros vecinos were involved. It means our neighbors were involved, which is a term they use for Americans. He said they were there on the ground, that American agents were there on the ground.

• 1:44:50Danny Jones?

  Where they loaded him on the plane.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Now, I was first of all, I, I, I, I published this, but I was like, said, you know, this, this is coming from a cartel guys and on the source. I, I don't have evidence. This is just what the guy said. I didn't want to not publish this stuff, that the, the information had come, but so this, this, this is what.

• 1:45:03Danny Jones?

  It's information. Take it or leave it.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Looking there, you know, you had the guys, I said, well, the, the Mexican cartels don't need Americans. I said, maybe it's confusion. You see guys in like camo gear. You think they're Americans making the arrest, but they can be Mexicans in, in camouflage gear. Or they have all kinds of guys on their payroll. They even have also US, uh, former US, US veterans who are in Mexico, fighting in the cartels on their payroll. You know, they, you have that.

• 1:45:28Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  But then I'm wondering, I think that was unlikely. I'm wondering now if it was more. If there were US agents on the ground, if it was more just. Not in, you know, they don't need the US agents to actually.

• 1:45:45Danny Jones?

  For strength or for power, for force, right?

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  It's what cartels murder people. That's what they do. However. They have the US, you know, agents, could they be there with the radio saying the plane is leaving at this time? Imagine the, the scenario, you're kidnapping a guy and you're flying him into the United States. You're not, you know, on a plane, you're not worried about being shot down. You're flying a plane into the United States.

• 1:46:12Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Kind of, you know, blind.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  You know, the other thing is that, you know, again, this, this guy Joe Hefton came out.

• 1:46:19Danny Jones?

  You need tight oversight. So you want to make sure you have eyes everywhere.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Well, another, uh, uh, the information he had was that shortly before the, the plane landed with, with El Mayo. Some US federal plane landed, maybe military or something, landed in that same airfield shortly before. I mean, maybe it had been like, you know, when, when they came in, they were like, you know, they're following them with US military from the border coming in or, or something.

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  But I think a, a, a deeper, a deeper US involvement. So, so what you were saying before about the. Again, how, what did you actually do about this? It's like, you know, one thing we do know is that there's this kind of all this involvement. Um, you know, what should the kind of US policy be? I mean.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Uh, on the Mexican side, you know, Mexican law enforcement has to be dealt with by Mexicans. Now, one of the things, you know, there can be different, different levels of this happening. But just a few, you know, a month and a half ago, I was up in the mountains in the state of Guerrero.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  And it's an interesting thing of how community security can work in some places. And this was an indigenous group

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  um, of people who created their own, they called their own militia, basically taking care of their own security.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  And, and so they, they were a bunch of guys with, with firearms. You can see a photograph if you like. If you check, if you go to um, www.crashoutmedia.com.

• 1:47:59Danny Jones?

  That's your, your blog for your substack?

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I may, see that very first, if you will, it lies that main.

• 1:48:05Danny Jones?

  The central one, central photo, Steve.

• 1:48:11Danny Jones?

  Wow. So who are all those folks?

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so these are basically a group of guys, and this is gonna be one of the solutions. Again, I mean, not, this doesn't work for everything, but works for some places in Mexico. Um, it's like saying, well, they're gonna take care of their own security. And, and they, they like created their own militia and to say that the cartels are not gonna enter their territory. And these are guys, now, these are mostly from, well, these people are pretty much exclusively from indigenous groups. So they're like, they call like Misteca.

• 1:48:45Danny Jones?

  They're gonna need bigger guns.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, well, they might have bigger guns.

• 1:48:49Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  They're not showing in that photograph.

• 1:48:53Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:48:54Speaker 01

  Because legally, these guys are allowed in their farms to have hunting rifles.

• 1:49:02Danny Jones?

  Hmm, got it.

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  But they're not allowed to have, you know, AR-15s, AK-47s.

• 1:49:07Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  So for what I'm photographing and putting out there, if I was putting, photographing them with AR-15s, AK-47s, then, then they can't show that stuff. Uh, but they, they set up, they basically, they're volunteers, these guys, who like serve like a couple of years. And they'll um, look out for the borders and try and stop any cartel infringement on their territories. Now, that can't work all over Mexico, and sometimes these same groups, they call them auto-defenders or self-defense groups. Sometimes these same groups will be, you know, then end up working for a cartel, end up kind of being the cartel's forces on the street.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  Uh, but these guys, uh, you know, it's one of the, one of the solutions in, in Mexico is like communities taking care of their own defense.

• 1:49:59Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  And trying to, now, you still, you know, it doesn't work, that can be maybe one part, you know, at local, some local level, some communities. But you also need a federal government, you need police. Now, now, some of the things that the current federal government is doing

• 1:50:15Speaker 01

  is hitting, generally hitting some of the cartels hard right now in Mexico, under pressure from the United States, under pressure from Trump. But we saw, again, the taking down of El Mencho.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  So, again, that was a CIA drone. They followed a girlfriend, this is according to their story, they followed the girlfriend to where El Mencho was.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  Like, I went to this place and you had one set of cabins where he was, but the shooting didn't happen in those cabins, apparently. It happened in a different set of cabins. So then you had the Mexican military go in there.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  And they chased El Mencho, so this other set of cabins, they say, and there was a big shootout there. One of the weird things, I went to the cabins where the shooting happened, and witnesses told me there was generally a lot of shooting there. However, most of the buildings were not damaged. There wasn't like bullet holes, most of the buildings. There was a bunch of shells of like 50-cal shells, you know, that, that kind of size.

• 1:51:24Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:26Speaker 01

  In one particular cabin, but also they were kind of weird, like they had been like even like picked up and scattered or something, because some of them were like inside the, the room. But then the police left the, the scene wide open, so a lot of people wandering around there, so it was very contaminated. And you couldn't really tell, but anyway, they, they, they took him from there, supposedly. And supposedly, he died of his injuries in transit.

• 1:51:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Now, um, somebody told me in, in, inside Mexican law enforcement that they'd made the decision inside Mexico to, to execute him.

• 1:52:05Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a couple of reasons why they'd wanna execute him. One is that, uh, they wanted revenge, and this guy had killed Mexican generals. He'd attempted to kill the current Mexican public security director. Um, you know, he killed a lot of soldiers. Even that day, when he was killed, um, there was 25 national guard soldiers at least murdered on that day by his people. So they wanted revenge. And the second thing is, did this guy, was he threatening them with saying that I'm gonna bring out, you know, the story of this corruption and this corruption, you know?

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  But one of the weird things is they never showed photographs of the body.

• 1:52:53Danny Jones?

  That is weird.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  It could be, is my speculation, it could be that if they shot him in the face, you know, point-blank range in the face, and the body, the face was all messed up or something, it's gonna point, you know, it would be obvious. But it leaves that weird suspicion, why didn't they show? You know, there, there, there's photographs of his grave, and it was a really, really big grave with all these kind of flowers in, in Guadalajara.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  But yeah, so on, on that side, you've, you've got the, you know, you have got Mexican law enforcement cracking down. Uh, they've been taking, um, they've been sending some of these top guys to prison in the United States, transferring them into US custody, even.

• 1:53:35Danny Jones?

  Didn't Carl Quintero get transferred here?

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, yeah. And they're overriding their extradition appeals. Which means basically what they're doing is they're saying, we don't care if you're fighting extradition. We don't care about your legal process, we're gonna just take you to the United States.

• 1:53:54Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  And they're, they're claiming what this, because they're a threat to national security, we should give them to US custody. It's kind of controversial, but again, it's this idea of like, we're dealing them, we're dealing with them as terrorist organizations. And we're taking the gloves off, it's a bit like what Paul Kelly is doing down El Salvador. You know, just saying, I'm just gonna, you know, we're not gonna give these people regular rights anymore as prisoners, we're gonna just simply, you know, fly you into US custody, or lock you up without, you know, without trial, or all kinds of things, they're basically taking the gloves off. Uh, but uh, who in Mexico, I mean, you know, some people, you know, some lawyer said, you know, one of their lawyers said, oh, they're, they're, they're, they're breaking the, um, they're not, they're not caring about their rights. But then how many people in Mexico care about the rights of these guys when you've got these mass graves?

• 1:54:40Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  You know, among them, the SETA-40, SETA-42, um, Carl Quintero, the head of the Juarez cartel, all these big guys were handed into US custody. So they, you know, they're, they're doing some, you know, fighting, and then it like, then the US, you know, what should the US do about its own drug problem? Uh, its own drug market, which, according to the Rand Institute, America, they have a survey, they say what Americans spend on illegal drugs.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  Uh, you can see they have all the kind of, you know, method, methodology, it's an estimate. A methodology of how much Americans spend on illegal drugs, and it's estimated to be 150 billion dollars a year.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  That Americans spend on illegal drugs.

• 1:55:23Danny Jones?

  How much does Europe spend on illegal drugs?

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  Similar numbers these days, you know, similar number, well, well, cocaine now, I mean, you know, Europe's actually bigger in total numbers.

• 1:55:33Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  And some of the cocaine per capita now in Europe is, is, is above the United States.

• 1:55:39Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  But it doesn't, Europe does, it's less, because you know, Europe doesn't have the same market in terms of crystal meth or fentanyl.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  Um, uh, but like cocaine numbers are similar itself.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  So what should, you know, America do about that? And my honest answer is I really don't know. Uh, I mean, it's a weird situation. You can go to, you know, Baltimore, Maryland and, and see people openly selling heroin.

• 1:56:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  Um, you know, all these places.

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  At the same time, they're bombing boats, but, but I don't know what, what the answer is. I, I don't know what the answer is.

• 1:56:14Danny Jones?

  Hold that thought, I gotta take a leak real quick.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:16Danny Jones?

  We'll be right back. Another thing that I wanted to ask you about was

• 1:56:23Danny Jones?

  like the advanced technology that they've been able to get their hands on. I think, um, a couple of years ago, when I had Louis Shapiro on the show.

• 1:56:31Speaker 01

  Oh, are we recording now?

• 1:56:32Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah, we're back.

• 1:56:35Danny Jones?

  He was explaining to me how

• 1:56:40Danny Jones?

  some, one of his sources told him they got their hands on this software called the Titan software, uh, which allowed them to basically, all they had to do was like type in a phone number and it would give them the tracking location of where that phone was and allow them to get into the phone and like zero day hack it or something like that. And allegedly they got this software from Israel or something crazy. Have you heard of this?

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Look, I mean, one thing in, in Mexico, basically when you're covering this stuff in Mexico, your phone is compromised, massively compromised. And that goes for anybody really covering this stuff. Uh, I mean, we know that the Mexican government had, uh, contract, uh, Pegasus contracts with the Israel company, Israeli company Pegasus, which was for a lot of the phone, uh, phone infiltration, phone wire.

• 1:57:38Danny Jones?

  It's one of those zero day hacks.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, and the Mexican government, and you know, I know, you know, for a fact, a lot of people you, when you're talking to a lot of other journalists or people, uh, uh, uh, that have been identified as being, uh, targeted by those hacks. And the Mexican government itself is very compromised, working with cartels, as we discussed. But as well as the main Mexican federal government, you know, so the Mexican federal government itself is different agencies. You have the military who are doing phone hacks. And then you have the Mexican intelligence service. So Mexico has its own, its own intelligence service, internal intelligence service. And then the attorney general's office, but also you have different state governments who have their own intelligence services.

• 1:58:24Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  And they're also working with cartels and you have independent cartel people doing stuff. So in terms of, and, and I mean, Pegasus stuff, which, which initially this is going back a couple of years was like, you know, you, you got some, you know, email something and you pressed it. And then that allowed you to have a hack, you know, you got you hacked. But nowadays they're more sophisticated. Nowadays they can hack people's phones, um, without them doing anything. I think there's, there's very sophisticated ways of hacking phones now.

• 1:58:53Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm. I mean, they have more money than most countries, not most, but lots of countries.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure thing. But also, uh, I've been, you know, they, they, they have a lot of, uh, use of weaponized drones.

• 1:59:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  And I went to a place in the state of Guerrero, where there was attacks on a, on various villages with weaponized drones by a cartel.

• 1:59:21Danny Jones?

  What kind of drones are we talking? Are we talking like, uh, like Ukrainian?

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  The ones in, in this case, so, so in this particular case, I went in with one local cartel

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  who was being attacked with drones by another bigger cartel.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

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• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  And the local cartel, or, or quite a small local group within alliance to one of the bigger national cartels. It's an area called Tecpan de Galiana is, is the municipality, but it has a lot of mountains in the area and they have a lot of different villages. And they're being hit by these drones and they shot down one of the drones. And they shot it down and they re pieced together. So we took photographs of the drone they'd shot down. And they also gave us the information. They took the phone, the stuff, the cars out of the drone. So we even had, uh, videos of showing how they were using, uh, drone. They, they could, you could see some of the drone bombs they were using.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  And this was these kind of drones, this kind of sized drones. So these are like, uh, the DTI, kind of more like industrial ones.

• 2:01:51Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  Agricultural ones, that kind of thing. They have all different drones they're using.

• 2:01:55Danny Jones?

  These weren't like Reaper drones.

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 2:01:57Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, this kind of stuff. And, and then the bombs they were dropping. So in this case, they had these, they were using like, uh, fire extinguishers and these, uh, canisters. And they dropped these down, they had two types. They had one type which was, um, more like, uh, creating fire. So more like just like burning, you know, burning buildings. And one more like shrapnel, exploding with shrapnel. Now, they were, they were using these to hit these different, uh, locations, including cartel houses. Some of you have these small villages in the mountains and you have the cartel house in, in, in the town. This being hit and you get kind of, kind of obvious.

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  Sometimes you see these, uh, this small village in the one, you know, a bunch of like small poor houses. Then there's one like a big fortified compound in the village. It's the cartel house. So they'd hit that, but also they'd be hitting like regular villages. And people were fleeing their villages.

• 2:02:59Danny Jones?

  Civilians.

• 2:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, regular civilians. And people were fleeing, yeah, this kind of stuff. Well, you have this damage happening and people were fleeing their homes because of this happening.

• 2:03:10Danny Jones?

  Jesus.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  Now, the actual casualties so far are fairly low, uh, from the drones in Mexico, the armored drones. But psychologically it's terrifying for people. If you're in some, you know, village in the mountains and then you hear the sounds of like drones above and then they're kicking, you know, these bombs come down. So the people were fleeing their areas. Uh, and I talked to one guy who was in a pickup truck and he was fleeing. He said like, now why are they doing it? And he said, well, they, they wanna, he believed they wanna take over these areas, take over, like we will basically force a village to flee. And then we can put our own people, give that, those houses, that land to other people. Um, and you know, who, who are taking the resources from the area.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  So it's not only, it becomes again, not only about drugs, it's about a weird kind of feudal control of territory. You know, we're, we're a military group or paramilitary group and we're gonna take, you know, we're like warlords. I'm gonna take over this territory. Now,

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  in this, uh, area,

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  so the, the cartel who was attacking the area was the Familia Michoacana, it's called La Familia, was the cartel attacking.

• 2:04:24Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  And the cartel who gave us access to this had a prisoner at the time, who was from the other cartel, from La Familia cartel.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  And we were allowed to interview the prisoner. He was a young guy, about 21 years old. And he'd been with this other cartel attacking with, using drones. He wasn't a drone guy himself. He was just like a guy who was in the convoy. And he, he lost, they're, they're like, they're like a guerrilla group trekking in the mountains. He'd been up with them for two years in the mountains with his group. And he lost track of the convoy, like there's a convoy of guys. And there's a guy in front, he lost track with the guy in front.

• 2:05:11Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  And then he was like wandering around by himself.

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, without any food or water and he'd like, you know, and then he, then he just turned up to some local villages in the mountains, like, give me some water, you know? And they, they took him and they handed him into the local cartel. When we interviewed him and he gave us this interview and we didn't know what they're gonna do with him. They're gonna, are they gonna hand him into the authorities? They're gonna kill him? We didn't know. I went back there again later and apparently they'd released him. They said they released him. Just like let him, let him go and then he was just like a young kid, basically.

• 2:05:45Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  Recruited, you know, one of these recruits. He, he said he'd kind of been, you know, he, he was on a, uh, was he on a, put in a fairly low salary? He was on a salary, living up in the mountains. He kind of said he'd been forced into being recruited, which I wasn't totally sure about. I think he maybe made the, you know, sometimes somebody makes a bad choice and they say they've been forced to do it. I wasn't totally convinced that in his case, if he'd been forced, that there are forced recruitments and he was being paid. Uh, but he was a kind of innocent kid in some ways, who, you know, was involved in this stuff. And he discussed, you know, who were the drone operators and gave us quite a lot of details about that stuff.

• 2:06:22Danny Jones?

  Do you think it's possible that the cartels could ever get a nuke or maybe have already got a nuke?

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  So I, I don't think that's probably likely. However, you know, because, because of their, the, the way they operate, they're, they're, they're thinking about like, you know, how do we control this territory? Now, sometimes they do use violence against the Mexican government. Or against civilians to try and make, you know, terror tactics, to try and make, uh, for, for a tactical reason. An example of some of the, the, the open terror tactics they use.

• 2:07:00Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  Uh, one time there were celebrations in Mexico on the 15th of September, which is Independence Day, 15th and 16th. And a busman just threw grenades into a plaza, people celebrating. Suddenly grenades thrown, just like throwing grenades.

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  Another thing was burning down a casino.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  You know, sometimes, you know, another thing was when they.

• 2:07:28Speaker 01

  I I I went to this this scene, actually, the worst single incident I I I went to. They they dumped forty nine bodies on a road in northeast Mexico. They all had their hands cut off, their feet cut off, and their heads cut off. And they were dumped on a road in a place called Cadareta. I went and turned up at the morgue when the when the bodies were taken to the morgue. Um, it was by the Setas cartel, that cartel I talked about. And they were likely innocent victims who were kidnapped and taken. And so they have these kind of terroristic things of just killing civilians. But a lot of this is more about.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Very very localized tactical pressure.

• 2:08:14Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  They want the government to back out of a certain area, so we're gonna like punish you, hurt you.

• 2:08:20Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  We're gonna like, um, you know, they took over the city of Culiacan one time in the city of the state capital of Culiacan.

• 2:08:29Speaker 01

  When Orbidio Guzman, the guy we talked about now in the United States, making a deal. But this guy was arrested by a special group of military with federal police backing. When the cartel had him, this is twenty two thousand nineteen, the cartel had him. Sorry, the military and police had him in a house, but they couldn't get him out of the city. And the cartel rose up with seven hundred to eight hundred gunmen who took over the city. They they they start attacking military barracks where the families were, they closed up, they closed down the whole city. Until the Mexican government released him.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  So they're. Yes, this is using violence now, there's a guy called Ben Lessing, he's an academic at Chicago. And he has a good term for this. He says violent lobbying. What they're using is violence to lobby. Like here you have, you know, a business lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby here, who, you know, lobbies with money to try and get the government to do what it wants. The cartels will use violence to lobby the government in their favor. Like we're lobbying the government to release our guy.

• 2:09:41Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  So from that point of view, the violence they're using is is more locally based and and and nuke is is. A power is a big thing there, but I will give a couple of caveats to that. One is that they are buying all kinds of weapons from all kinds of places. I mean, there's there's recently been arrests of people in Eastern Europe. One of the cartels was buying a bunch of weaponry from Eastern Europe. They do have bigger weapons, RPG sevens, um, which they were getting from the Honduran military.

• 2:10:15Speaker 01

  You know, you know, these various militaries, militaries, armies around Latin America with stockpiles of grenades, with RPG sevens, these kind of things. And they'll buy bigger weapons from them and use them now and again, although some, you know, the main killers in in in the fighting are AK forty sevens, AR fifteens, but they will have bigger weapons.

• 2:10:35Danny Jones?

  They don't want to do things that are gonna devastate their, because because all the fighting is so close and condensed within Mexico, like. It's not like you're sending an ICBM somewhere across the world, right? They're gonna, they're ultimately affecting their own population. It's a very, you know, intra-fighting dispute. So like, even if you want to say, oh, like if they got biological weapons, they wouldn't want to deploy biological weapons, because that would eventually get them too.

• 2:11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, e- exactly, they they're quite localized. But they are involved in these international arms trafficking networks, without a doubt. And getting things where they can, including from governments, including actually the the US military. You see stuff which should be in, you know, which is being stolen from the US military and ends up in the hands of cartels. But also even more so, um, you have weapons floating around, being taken from armies. You have armies like Surinam, the government of Surinam, so that army can buy a bunch of stuff. You know, go to gun fairs and buy, you know, weapons fairs, international weapons fairs, buy things, then like you have people, you know, sending them

• 2:11:47Speaker 01

  to cartels, Honduras. You know, there was a piece of moon rock which the United States gave to Honduras.

• 2:11:55Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 2:11:55Speaker 01

  Some years ago, and it got sold onto the black market.

• 2:12:00Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  So so some of these.

• 2:12:02Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I heard the cartels are really into like archaeological stuff too. I had a friend who was doing some exploring in like somewhere in south Mexico, looking at some pyramids or whatever. And he said these like ancient pyramids in Mexico were being uh protected by armed cartels. Because they were there trying to excavate it and sell shit on the black market.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  I I was just to finish, just to finish the thing about the nukes and then I'll get on to that. So so one thing you do know that they are involved in this. The black market of of weapons.

• 2:12:37Speaker 01

  The second thing, I mean, there there sometimes you get these stories that do happen, there's something like.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  Trucks with nuclear material are jacked in Mexico. There is a there's a nuclear reactor in Mexico, in Veracruz, and like a nuclear power plant in Mexico.

• 2:12:54Danny Jones?

  Is this the only one in Mexico?

• 2:12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, only one in Mexico, yeah. So so suddenly you get stuff now, sometimes they could be, you know, the problem is there's so much truck robbery in Mexico. It can be like by accident, you know, like, you know, or not intentionally going for that target. But that is a concern when you see this stuff like something like a, you know, a truck with nuclear materials being been hijacked. You know, there's vast amounts of hijacking there of trucks. Um, and and you can see why, if if you look up to this terrorist designation. And the fact you have the CIA now fighting cartels. You do see this thing going over the years where. You know, the the US military were watching this stuff for years, seeing these groups emerge and grow on the southern border.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  You had in Texas, you know, um, boats engaging, you know, boats on the on the Rio Grande engaging in firefights with Setas and with armed groups on the Mexican side, going back years. So for a long time, they're like, they're like, you know, this is what a military does, and military sees this, says like, this is a problem. We shouldn't allow these kind of armed groups to be growing in the country, even independently of just the drug trafficking issue itself, the fact you've got these these armed cartels. But you mentioned about the um, the trade in like pre Hispanic objects.

• 2:14:22Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  So, you know, you've got a bunch of contraband happening as well, you've got, you know, trade in exotic animals. One of the things that a lot of cartel guys are into are like, you know, lions and tigers and Panthers and stuff, yeah.

• 2:14:37Danny Jones?

  Hippos.

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously Pablo Escobar was big into that. Uh, but as well as that, you have.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  This this goes back to before the cartels. In fact, a lot of what the cartels have done is take over illegal businesses that were happening anyway. So there was a trade going back decades and decades of um, somebody finds some. You know, it could be a tenth century, eleventh century, pre Hispanic item.

• 2:15:13Speaker 01

  Now legally, that cannot leave Mexico, because Mexico wants to keep its heritage inside Mexico.

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  But there's collectors around the world. It could be in the United States, could be in Europe, could be in Japan, whatever, who are like, oh, I want that. I'll give you a million dollars for it.

• 2:15:35Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:15:35Speaker 01

  So you have a trade, a legal trade in pre Hispanic artifacts. In Mexico, you can have a private collector has them, people like Diego Rivera, the muralist, he had a big collection of pre Hispanic artifacts in his in his, you know, in his home, but you register them with, you know, say like, you know, register them with the with the E now, with the with the National Institute for, you know, archaeology and history, to say you've got this this stuff, so they're kept within Mexico.

• 2:16:03Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah, it's like I was saying earlier, they have their hands in so much, it's like. If hypothetically, the US was to like do some sort of like blanket uh policy where it made drugs legal. Right, where like we regulated it and taxed it, and if you want to do some cocaine, you just go get a prescription or whatever, I don't know how you would do it, but you would get like some merc cocaine.

• 2:16:34Danny Jones?

  And you could do it legally, and we had like a robust enough and a non

• 2:16:41Danny Jones?

  corrupt medical system here that actually could help people with addiction and stuff like that, like in a perfect world.

• 2:16:49Danny Jones?

  How much of a dent would that actually make in the cartels if they're already doing business in all these other ways?

• 2:16:55Speaker 01

  Well, there's a few things to say about that. So first of all, when going back fourteen years now, fifteen years. Uh, when I was covering um this situation fifteen years ago, and I was seeing the cartels massively involved in marijuana. And I was going with the Mexican army when they were going and burning marijuana fields. And seeing that the cartels were making billions of dollars from marijuana, from weed. And that money was funding these organizations which were growing and murdering people and, you know, paying for hitmen, paying for guns, paying for bullets, paying for corruption. So at the time I was like writing editorials, okay, we legalize marijuana to hit the cartels.

• 2:17:41Speaker 01

  This will help, you know, I was optimistic then, hopeful then, you know, you take away marijuana from the cartels. And that will be a big cash crop being away from them. Now marijuana was legalized in, you know, now in, you know, recreationally, medically, all different things.

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  But the market of Mexican marijuana has collapsed. Now there's very, very little marijuana smuggled from Mexico to the United States. Basically, uh, now, you know, the US produces their marijuana.

• 2:18:17Danny Jones?

  Cartels are also growing it inside the United States, right?

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's also an issue with cartels involved in growing weed inside US territory. But the market of trafficking marijuana from Mexico to the United States is basically dead, it's gone down like not over ninety percent.

• 2:18:33Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:18:34Speaker 01

  Ninety five percent.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  However, this didn't destroy cartels or reduce the power of cartels. And the cartels, now they might have done this anyway, but they got more involved in fentanyl. And it's an interesting story about how they got involved in fentanyl, but they got more involved in that time in fentanyl.

• 2:18:55Speaker 01

  And other things. So that in itself didn't, and they're involved in extortion, kidnapping, illegal mining and all these other businesses. Now, still, you know, if there was no drug trade at all in the United States, no illegal drug trade, that would affect cartels.

• 2:19:19Danny Jones?

  It would.

• 2:19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it would. I mean, you still have to, you still need law enforcement in Mexico. I mean, you still need,

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  Mexico to, you know, these, these, these are still powerful criminal organizations that Mexico has to defeat or has to reduce in power. I mean, you're going to, every country has crime, but you've got to reduce it to a level that's not, you know, the level it is right now, the level it has been for the last twenty five years.

• 2:19:45Speaker 01

  But however, I, I, I don't see.

• 2:19:50Speaker 01

  Like, I, I don't know the answer to this. I used to be very enthusiastic about legalization. And now I find myself disillusioned.

• 2:19:59Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  And, and not sure what the answer is. I don't, you know, then we should go, you know, go back on legalizing marijuana. It's happened now. But I must admit, it didn't, there was a lot of things that people hoped about legalization of marijuana that didn't happen.

• 2:20:17Speaker 01

  And in terms of other drugs.

• 2:20:21Speaker 01

  Um, so, so an interesting thing about how fentanyl happened and how the cartels got involved in fentanyl.

• 2:20:27Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:20:29Speaker 01

  So, what was it? What was, a lot of things happened. In some ways, it was quite revolutionary how this, how this affected the drug trade. So you had this move from plant-based drugs. So like, you know, marijuana, obviously weed, but also heroin, it comes from like just a poppy, as we looked at earlier.

• 2:20:48Danny Jones?

  Cocaine.

• 2:20:49Speaker 01

  Cocaine, it's the coca leaf. So basically they come, they start from a plant.

• 2:20:52Danny Jones?

  What's crazy too, sorry to interrupt you, the, the cocoa leaf. Who, was it Dennis McKenna who was telling us about this?

• 2:20:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20:59Danny Jones?

  The cocoa leaf has like a tremendous amount of like beneficial, positive effects on people for things like altitude sickness and the other things. And people drink it as tea and it's like this nice mild stimulant. But it's totally illegal in the United States.

• 2:21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. And obviously in, in the Andes and South America, people have been chewing.

• 2:21:22Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  On cocoa leaves for, for a long time.

• 2:21:24Danny Jones?

  I've heard it's very pleasant. I'd like to try it.

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  You also have use, like, you know, like in South America, use of coca in certain rituals as well.

• 2:21:33Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  And, and they have certain psychedelic properties. I think it can release in certain ways.

• 2:21:37Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:21:37Speaker 01

  Uh, the same way that obviously you have ayahuasca ceremonies and all kinds of stuff in, you know, long traditions of that back in, you know. And then some of that, I think, you know, some of the psychedelics, I think have, have a beneficial, a clear beneficial effect. But anyway, going, so you had the move from these plant-based drugs to synthetic drugs.

• 2:21:55Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  So particularly crystal meth and fentanyl.

• 2:22:01Speaker 01

  And in, in Mexico, now you had this, one of these, these early guys doing this was a guy called Shen Li Yigong.

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  You had in the United States, uh, this, this first explosion of, of, of crystal meth use. It got really big in the early two thousands, you know, the time kind of Breaking Bad came out and everyone was talking about like, there's a book called Meth Land, a really great book from the two thousands. Everyone was talking about the kind of big meth kind of scare or big meth concern back in the two thousands. And in the United States, they, they clamp down in the United States on crystal meth with the Combat Methamphetamine Act, I believe of two thousand and five. Where they made it hard to buy the precursors for meth. So precursors

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  being you go to the, you know, the, the shops and the pharmacies and you buy certain pills which you then use and, you know, convert into crystal meth.

• 2:23:02Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  So after that, they started creating the super labs in Mexico. And this guy called Shen Li Yigong was a Chinese, a guy born in China

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  who moved to Mexico and became naturalized Mexican citizen.

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  And what the key thing that he did with this guy was he links up the Chinese pharmaceutical companies with the Mexican cartels.

• 2:23:32Speaker 01

  This is a big alliance which we still see to this day, which has been a big, powerful, had a big, powerful impact in this.

• 2:23:40Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:23:41Speaker 01

  So this guy Shen Li Yigong, he was buying, he was a pharmaceutical entrepreneur. And he was buying, um, precursors, taking them to Mexico and selling them to Mexican cartels to make crystal meth.

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  He had so much money. Now, he, he was not an experienced money launderer. And cartels, you know, they've, they've got a center for doing this stuff. They're very experienced money launderers. He wasn't an experienced money launderer. So he had in his house

• 2:24:14Speaker 01

  two hundred and five million dollars in cash in a mansion in Mexico City. It's actually a total was, it was two hundred and five million dollars plus a couple of million dollars in pesos and all the, you know, they had like different currencies and stuff there.

• 2:24:28Danny Jones?

  Good God, where do you hide all that cash?

• 2:24:29Speaker 01

  I mean, you could see, take a photograph of that money. If you look at the cash seizure in Mexico City, you can see the, the site, there, there's this big pile of, uh, pile of cash there.

• 2:24:38Danny Jones?

  What would he type in to search for this?

• 2:24:40Speaker 01

  Uh, but cash seizure, Mexico City, uh, two hundred and five million.

• 2:24:44Danny Jones?

  Holy fuck, look at that. It's just a giant block of money.

• 2:24:50Speaker 01

  So, okay, look at this.

• 2:24:51Danny Jones?

  That's two hundred and five million dollars.

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  So you see the other currencies, you see that the main things were dollars.

• 2:24:56Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:56Speaker 01

  And then the other stuff is like other currency there.

• 2:24:59Danny Jones?

  Let's see if I can get a better, it's just a blurry ass photo. That is fucking crazy. It's like that, it's like that shot in Breaking Bad where that big fat black dude's laying on top of the bed of money in the side of the, uh, storage container.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 2:25:13Danny Jones?

  Oh my God. That's not real. That's gotta be fake.

• 2:25:15Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so, so check out this.

• 2:25:17Danny Jones?

  Is that real?

• 2:25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's a real story. So check out.

• 2:25:21Danny Jones?

  Yeah, that's it. Look at that.

• 2:25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:23Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:25:24Speaker 01

  So when this guy, when, when they made the seizure, they were like, um, this guy is, um, you know, we want to get this guy and, and, and he was hiding out in Las Vegas. Now this guy was going to Las Vegas.

• 2:25:42Danny Jones?

  This Chinese guy.

• 2:25:43Speaker 01

  Chinese guy, Shen Li Yigong. He was going to Las Vegas with suitcase of money.

• 2:25:52Speaker 01

  And just spending them in the casino, in casinos in Las Vegas. He spent over a hundred million, he lost over a hundred million in Las Vegas casinos.

• 2:26:02Danny Jones?

  Lost a hundred million.

• 2:26:03Speaker 01

  A hundred million. He was just going to, he, he had a girlfriend who was a, who was a croupier, Chinese girl who was a croupier. He bought her a million dollar house.

• 2:26:15Speaker 01

  But what was he doing? He was losing a hundred million, but what was he actually doing? Laundering the money. Because the casinos were paying back percentages of his losses.

• 2:26:27Danny Jones?

  So he struck a deal with the casinos?

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  Well, it's just the way it works. Like, I, I love Las Vegas.

• 2:26:32Danny Jones?

  So you, oh, say, so you're just doing the math on basically like how much you win versus how much you lose. So see.

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  It's not only that, it's not only that, like, what, basically like

• 2:26:41Speaker 01

  in Las Vegas, right? You can go, if you've lost a bunch of money at casino, you can say, oh, you know, I, I lost, I lost a hundred thousand dollars. And I lost a million dollars.

• 2:26:51Danny Jones?

  Oh, for taxes.

• 2:26:52Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, no, that.

• 2:26:52Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:26:53Speaker 01

  You can help me out. Give me, give me some money back. It's kind of crazy, but like, if, if a casino just took you for a million dollars.

• 2:27:00Speaker 01

  And they give you a hundred thousand back, so you're happiest to come to repeat customer.

• 2:27:03Danny Jones?

  Right. Maybe they'll give you, they'll give you, they'll give you a whole week's stay in like a penthouse suite, keep coming back, here's more free food.

• 2:27:12Speaker 01

  Now, actually the casinos, and you can, you can, ended up paying back, paying the US government loads of money out of money they took off Shen Li Yigong.

• 2:27:24Danny Jones?

  No way.

• 2:27:26Speaker 01

  So, so this is, so this is, it's kind of a crazy system because you're going there and.

• 2:27:31Danny Jones?

  That's just a really shitty way of laundering money.

• 2:27:34Speaker 01

  I, if, if, if you're like, if you're like a, uh, if you've got hundreds of millions of dollars, you suddenly make hundreds of millions of dollars, what's your big, what, you know, what's your big passion? What are you into? Gambling. If you, if you've got two hundred and seven million dollars sitting in your house in Mexico City, maybe you don't care. You're losing that. And if you can just like buy, you know, if you can have a girlfriend, you know, a, a, a cute croupier you like. And you can say, oh, I can buy you a million dollar house and you meet my girlfriend. You know, this is the crazy stuff people with money do. Anyway, when he was, he was on the run and I was working for the Associated Press news agency at the time in Mexico City.

• 2:28:12Speaker 01

  In the bureau in Mexico City and we got a call

• 2:28:16Speaker 01

  from a reporter, an Associated Press AP reporter in like Pittsburgh.

• 2:28:23Speaker 01

  Who was dealing with a different Chinese client. Uh, doing a different, a different, the, the, who had been approached by a lawyer in Pittsburgh. Doing the different Chinese client over some asylum claim. So they have another Chinese client who would like to talk to the press. Are you interested? Shen Li Yigong.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  But this is a Mexican affair, does the Mexican bureau have some questions? I wasn't personally involved in the story at the time. It was when I was pretty young, junior reporters, going back to two thousand, um, six.

• 2:29:01Speaker 01

  Uh, and other, other guy, another guy in the office got the, got the story.

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  So Mexico, of course, Mexico City was like, yeah, yeah, sure thing, you know, we're, we're interested. We'll talk to this guy.

• 2:29:15Speaker 01

  So he arranged a meeting with the guy in New York, Associated Press, and we sent, the agency sent Spanish language reporter, um, English language and Chinese.

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  And the guy spoke all languages with like an accent. His, his native language is kind of weird regional dialect.

• 2:29:33Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:29:36Speaker 01

  And he said, he came out with this kind of crazy story and said,

• 2:29:42Speaker 01

  the money wasn't mine.

• 2:29:45Speaker 01

  Whose was it? A Mexican politician's. He told me, look after, look up two hundred and five million dollars of my money, or I'll kill you. It was kind of a cra- a crazy story.

• 2:30:00Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:30:01Speaker 01

  But like, anyway, the, the, so, so this, this kind of crazy story came out, which, which the, it was the, the, the, the, the agency tried to deal with, like, how do you publish this kind of crazy accusation? The video got released and it was,

• 2:30:13Danny Jones?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 2:30:13Speaker 01

  It became a famous thing in Mexico. He, he actually said, he, he said, the, the guy told him, he, he, he said it in Spanish, he said, he said, co- co- cooper or coyo, he said, like, cooperate with me or I'm gonna, oh, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill you. Or your neck. It was kind of a crazy story. I think the guy was using it as a play to try and avoid extradition to Mexico. Uh, that, uh, he, um, now, the United States was gonna prosecute him. It ended up just giving him to Mexico. And one of the reasons was, it said, the Chinese government was uncooperative. And some of the pharmacy companies that Shen Nigong was buying from were Chinese government owned.

• 2:30:57Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:30:58Speaker 01

  And the Chinese government was uncooperative. And the US government, US prosecutor said, we'll give him to Mexico. And he got, and he said, don't get somebody to Mexico, they'll kill me in Mexico. They haven't. He's still in Mexico prison, Mexican prison right now. He was still trying to get his money back and his house back from Mexican prison, getting lawyers to try and make a play. But he's still currently incarcerated.

• 2:31:20Danny Jones?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:31:23Speaker 01

  What he did was establish this link between the, the Chinese pharmaceutical companies and the Mexican cartels.

• 2:31:30Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  So he's the kind of, you know.

• 2:31:32Danny Jones?

  Is the link still there?

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  The link is still there now. Fast forward two thousand thirteen. So then you get in the United States, um, the whole opioid epidemic in the United States.

• 2:31:44Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  Uh, which you have the saccharin family and the oxycontin.

• 2:31:51Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:31:51Speaker 01

  And all of this situation where loads of Americans get addicted to opioids through legal prescriptions.

• 2:32:04Speaker 01

  And loads of people dying because of overdoses and getting very seriously hooked. And then you get the United States government under this pressure, saying, we're gonna make it harder to prescribe opioids to these people. So suddenly they stop, you know, gradually, people stopping, writing them scripts. So they turn to the street and they're buying Mexican heroin. You get a big boom of heroin from Mexico. I talked to some of these guys in the mountains of Guerrero, where they're producing, you know, the, the, producing the opium uh, gum.

• 2:32:43Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:32:44Speaker 01

  Suddenly the prices for them are getting really high. They're, they're, they're, these are, these are farmers who produce the opium gum to make, how they sell to the cartel. Suddenly it goes up to, at that time, like thirty three thousand pesos for a kilo of gum. For them, it's like big money, they're buying a new truck. Buy a new quad bike, buy, have a party, they're, they're, they're selling, selling heroin. Now, around twenty thirteen,

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  the Mexican cartel, working with Chinese companies, starts buying fentanyl. They, they, they got the, they've already got the links there. They're already buying the precursors from China for crystal meth. They start buying fentanyl from China and mixing the fentanyl in the heroin.

• 2:33:29Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:33:30Speaker 01

  And they call it Chiva sintética. Like Chiva is like the, the, a word they use for, um, like Chiva, like goat for heroin.

• 2:33:42Speaker 01

  And they, they call it like synthetic goat.

• 2:33:45Speaker 01

  And they mix in, so they get the heroin and they mix in fentanyl. So people are taking heroin.

• 2:33:53Danny Jones?

  Why, now, why, though?

• 2:33:55Speaker 01

  Uh, to create a stronger product. And also a stronger product means creating more. If you're mixing.

• 2:34:01Danny Jones?

  Was it, was it cheaper?

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  Well, yes, it, you're making more money because if you've got a kilo heroin and then you mix in fentanyl, you can make that into like.

• 2:34:11Danny Jones?

  You spread it out more.

• 2:34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, five kilos.

• 2:34:13Danny Jones?

  Got it. It's like cutting cocaine with baking powder or something.

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So suddenly you've got like, you're making, you're, you're increasing your profits.

• 2:34:20Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 2:34:21Speaker 01

  And then users are getting used to a stronger product.

• 2:34:26Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:34:27Speaker 01

  So this begins around twenty thirteen. They start making a lot of money from synthetic heroin or heroin mixed with fentanyl. And then they just think, well, we, we don't need the heroin anymore. We can just, we can just make, we can just sell, you know, sell, sell the.

• 2:34:42Danny Jones?

  Sell fentanyl.

• 2:34:43Speaker 01

  Fentanyl straight. And, and then initially, then you start getting pressure from the United States under Trump one point zero. Um, for fen- for China not to sell fentanyl. But then China switches to selling precursors and they cook the fentanyl in Mexico.

• 2:35:00Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:35:02Speaker 01

  And then, now you really see the switch. It happens kind of gradually and then suddenly, and you really see the switch around like.

• 2:35:07Danny Jones?

  Wait, Trump was able to stop the fentanyl from coming into Mexico?

• 2:35:12Speaker 01

  So basically, uh, going back to before the twenty teens, China would sell fentanyl.

• 2:35:19Danny Jones?

  Straight up.

• 2:35:20Speaker 01

  Straight up. Sell fentanyl. Uh, there's actually a whole, there's like something like in more than a thousand different formulas for fentanyl. But like, you know, fentanyl is, is, is, is a, a, a drug that's used in hospitals all over the world.

• 2:35:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:35:32Speaker 01

  So there's, there's commercial production. So.

• 2:35:35Danny Jones?

  It's hard, it's more hardcore than morphine, right?

• 2:35:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically, um, uh, companies, you know, usually you set up a, a, a, a fake pharm- pharmaceutical company in Mexico or use a real pharmaceutical company, which the cartel gets involved with. And you go, I'm gonna order, you know, phone you up and order some fentanyl. Under Trump, they said, we're gonna stop doing that. We're gonna clamp down very heavily on fentanyl sales. But then they just switched up and bought the precursors.

• 2:36:04Danny Jones?

  So Trump convinced the Mexican government to stop that.

• 2:36:06Speaker 01

  The Chinese government.

• 2:36:06Danny Jones?

  The Chinese government?

• 2:36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, to stop the, the clamp, under, under the first Trump administration.

• 2:36:12Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:36:13Speaker 01

  And then they, they switched to precursors.

• 2:36:16Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:36:17Speaker 01

  And cook it in, in, uh, in Mexico. Now, when you get the sudden, like, you know, incredible rise of US overdose deaths. So you get suddenly skyrocketing, skyrocketing twenty seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

• 2:36:31Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:32Speaker 01

  Now, I was talking to one guy who was a, um, a hard drug user and investigator uh, up in like North Carolina.

• 2:36:42Danny Jones?

  I don't like to, I just like to investigate that. Sometimes, sometimes use just, you know, goes hand in hand.

• 2:36:49Speaker 01

  And, and he was describing how on the street

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  people who were using this stuff didn't really ever, you know, this move from heroin

• 2:37:01Speaker 01

  to, um, heroin mixed with fentanyl to fentanyl. They didn't really, they weren't really conscious of what they're taking on the street.

• 2:37:09Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:37:10Speaker 01

  They're simply buying dope. Or he'd say, they, they, they call it like, um, yeah, yeah, so, so the doses are so much more lethal with, with fentanyl.

• 2:37:19Danny Jones?

  What's carfentanil?

• 2:37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an even stronger version. It hasn't, I mean, fentanyl itself has, has proved the perfectly lethal product because carfentanil is so strong, it's actually like.

• 2:37:30Danny Jones?

  That's a lethal dose right there?

• 2:37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:32Danny Jones?

  Whoa.

• 2:37:34Speaker 01

  So, pieces of people on the street were like, say, I'm, I'm, I'm buying dope, or sometimes they call it like boy, or they call it like dog food or, or different, different, like, words they use in different places.

• 2:37:45Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:37:46Speaker 01

  But it is buying the, the dope on the street. But it was actually, it was so strong at the lower levels.

• 2:37:55Speaker 01

  Like, so the, the Mexican cartel would buy fentanyl and then sell fentanyl into the United States. Then they have their own distributors selling drugs in the United States at a, at a, at a, at a wholesale. The, the, the Mexican cartels are wholesalers in the United States.

• 2:38:10Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:38:11Speaker 01

  And then they go back down a level and you get to the kind of mid-level, mid to low level people.

• 2:38:16Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:38:17Speaker 01

  Who are cutting it up.

• 2:38:18Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  And then you get the people on the street just selling this product. And it was these mid to low level people didn't know how to cut the stuff.

• 2:38:28Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:38:29Speaker 01

  Because they got this and it was just too strong. They were used to cutting heroin. And as you said, the, the fentanyl somewhat, fentanyl is so much stronger, they didn't know how to cut it. So they were selling stuff that was too strong. And everyone, you know, started dying. Now, some people even died by having fentanyl mixed into cocaine.

• 2:38:46Danny Jones?

  Yes, and that, I got very skeptical about that. Like, when I fought, you started hearing stories about this a couple of years ago about this happening, like, you know, you hear stories of on Joe Rogan's podcast where he would talk about like comedians that he knows that did some cocaine in, at Los Angeles and they died the next day or the night, that same night, because there was fentanyl laced in it. And like, it didn't compute for me. I was like, so if the cartels are selling cocaine mixed with fentanyl, like, you would imagine that wouldn't be good for business because people would stop buying your fucking cocaine if it's killing everybody. Like, you don't want to kill your customer base, right? Because those two don't go hand in hand. That's like a lethal combo, right? Fentanyl and cocaine. One's going up, one's going down. So

• 2:39:26Danny Jones?

  and I read this long article, I can't remember where I, where I read this, but I remember reading this very long article about some guy who did a deep investigation into this. And he was investigating cocaine in different cities around America. And, and essentially what he was saying was like the, the, the wealthier folks, like the Wall Street type people who are buying cocaine, uh. You know, they're getting it from somebody who just sells it to white collar folks like, like Wall Street people or wealthy people. They're getting their cocaine from the same guy. So he's not dabbling in other drugs. But the low level people who are selling weed, they're selling pills, oxys, heroin and some cocaine. You know, it's possible that when they were cutting up the heroin,

• 2:40:10Danny Jones?

  they didn't clean the table before they started cutting up the cocaine and some, a little bit of fentanyl accidentally got into the cocaine. And that's why some of the people that were dying were just, was, they were dealing with dealers like that.

• 2:40:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think that's exactly what happened. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, basically it was like the, they, the fentanyl that were moving was so strong. And they didn't know, they wouldn't know how to be careful with this. And like, you know, like people who sell drugs at low level, they're not the most hygienic.

• 2:40:37Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  You know, people, so they can like, you know, you're cutting up staff, you're using, you know, you might use a, you know, a coffee machine or a blender or whatever to, to mix drugs up and you don't clean it. And they ended up killing people. Now, after, after there was, um, people charged with murder over some of these cases. And some famous people died of some of these overdoses.

• 2:40:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:59Speaker 01

  And people who are like musicians and like, you know, like wealthy people, not just street guys, but wealthy people who take cocaine died.

• 2:41:06Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:41:06Speaker 01

  Then they started being more careful. So, so, so one of the things that's helped between various things, now you've seen a, a reduction now in overdose deaths. Now, one of the things is that the mid to low level dealers have understood now how to mix this stuff. And that's helped reduce the number of deaths, among other things as well. Like there's, there's more, um, there's more of the emergency things around, you know, uh, to try and, try and stop the deaths and stuff.

• 2:41:34Danny Jones?

  I was reading this article about a year ago. I think I saw it in the Rolling Stone, uh, Rolling Stone article about, um, I think it was like Bob Dylan and some other like big eighties rock stars. Who, they were just getting their cocaine straight from Merck, the pharmaceutical manufacturer out of Germany. And these guys were just getting somehow loads of pharmaceutical grade cocaine shipped to their concerts. And, uh, that was like the, uh, the golden, the golden days of, you know, the seventies and eighties and like the, uh, you know, like the, the counterculture movement in the United States and all that seemed, that seemed to be a, a better time.

• 2:42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for these, uh, um, it's funny when people say about when they, they use like some of the people who are, who are moving cocaine. And have access to the brick and they're taking like serious, serious amounts.

• 2:42:33Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:34Speaker 01

  And they get to the point where they do kind of hallucinate and kind of, you know, they, they kind of, you know, it's not just about getting high. It's about actually like really kind of going off there when you've accessed a very high amounts of, of, of, uh, of pure cocaine.

• 2:42:48Danny Jones?

  Right. I've heard stories. I mean, I know people, I have friends who are, you know, a lot older than me, obviously, but like were in Miami in the heydays, like trafficking bricks of cocaine all the time. Guys, one guy I know in specific, he missed the nineties because he was in prison. He went to prison in the nineties from, from, uh, he was telling me a story, but he's like, he's like, uh, when you're going to the Keys, because he delivered a lot of cocaine to the Keys, like big bricks of coke, like tons of cocaine. He said, uh, going south, if you want to deliver coke south, it's like, no problem. Never come back north with it. He's like, you'll always get busted. Cause he was telling me one story about how he, um, he was selling, selling like a kilo to somebody or whatever. And it was like some sort of a sting operation where he was at a Dairy Queen meeting him.

• 2:43:32Danny Jones?

  And, uh, you know, long story short, he ended up getting, getting busted and going to prison for 10 years. But like, you can, if you hang out around this area long enough, you'll meet, you'll meet a dozen people that have been to prison for trafficking cocaine. Because it was just everywhere in Florida in the eighties.

• 2:43:48Speaker 01

  So Carlos Leyda, who I interviewed in Colombia, was, say, was one of the founders, considered the founder of the Medellin cartel, very close to Pablo Escobar.

• 2:43:57Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:43:57Speaker 01

  Pablo Escobar tried to kill him. He ended up being imprisoned in the United States for 33 years. Uh, but he, he, so he was trafficking the stuff there and he, he was the guy who took over Normans Cay in the Bahamas. And he, uh, you know, the private island they had, they created that as an island, Normans Cay in the Bahamas.

• 2:44:17Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:44:17Speaker 01

  And use that to traffic cocaine. Now he, uh, um, you know, he's changed a lot. He did 33 years in prison. He would have done, you know, he got.

• 2:44:26Danny Jones?

  He's still alive?

• 2:44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's still alive. He's, he's, he's in Colombia. He, he would have done like a hundred and fifty years. Um, you know, they gave him like life plus a hundred and fifty or something.

• 2:44:36Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:44:37Speaker 01

  Um, you know, it was a huge case. So Carlos Leyda is famous. In Netflix, he's shown with a swastika tattoo.

• 2:44:43Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 2:44:44Speaker 01

  There's the whole story that he's this kind of neo-Nazi drug trafficker, which he totally denies. Uh, it's funny, when I asked him about that, I said, you know, people say you're a Nazi, you know, online. He said like, he said like Netflix did a comedy about drug traffickers. They're called narcos. And they showed me with a swastika and that should never have happened. Cause I never had, I don't, I don't even have any tattoos. And he said, it's illegal even in Germany to have a, he, he, his dad was German. He was brought up in Colombia.

• 2:45:11Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 2:45:12Speaker 01

  So anyway, he, but he, he, he described, he was kind of humbled a lot by 33 years in prison. He did, he did four years solitary. Four years in a supermax solitary, which he said was so hardcore that he had to really kind of tell himself, um, uh, he had to say to himself, um, you know, it's very hard mentally to survive. If anyone's been in, in, in incarceration, even in a cell for 12 hours, you know, it's like, it's pretty hardcore, let alone being four years in solitary. One of the reasons why El Chapo right now is in supermax in solitary and he's just writing letters all the time saying, you know, this is driving me mad. I want to get out of here. So the supermax, uh, thing is just, is this, this thing hanging over saying, we can put you in supermax and make you do solitary.

• 2:45:56Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:45:57Speaker 01

  Um, this is what we have. It's not death penalty, but in some ways, you know, it, it, it's, it's, in some ways it can be worse than death. And he, and Carlos Leyda was saying that he was telling himself, uh, saying, um, you know, when he's in, in a, um, in, in the cell doing solitary, he was telling himself, this is a good place. The guards are your friends. They are other prisoners, but they sleep outside. Your prison uniform are your clothes. The food is nice. You know, he was trying to tell himself these things.

• 2:46:32Danny Jones?

  Doing some mental gymnastics.

• 2:46:33Speaker 01

  To mentally survive. But he's so humbled by this time in prison. And so when, you know, other stories about when he had the, the, um, Normans Cay, uh, island.

• 2:46:45Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:46:46Speaker 01

  There's other, other people have said about, it was just kind of crazy sex and drugs parties and all this kind of stuff.

• 2:46:50Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:46:51Speaker 01

  And I asked him about that and he was just said, well, a lot of people, their dream is having a private island. I did it, but I did it illegally. He didn't really want to go into all of the, the kind of sex and, sex and drug stories. But yeah, he said, when they were, they were moving, he was working with all the, all the traffickers here along, you know, the coast in Florida. A lot of the, the American Florida smugglers were, you know, you have the island in, in Normans Cay. They go over there on boats and pick up drugs and they know the waters and be able to, but yeah, it used to be, you know, wide open.

• 2:47:23Danny Jones?

  It seems to be a thing with people who just have ungodly amounts of wealth where like they get bored with the fact they can buy anything.

• 2:47:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:47:31Danny Jones?

  So now they want to have like their own little world to themselves on their own island. Where they can do things that are like above the law, illegal things. It's just like they want to push the boundaries of human limits and what they can get away with. And the more and more I hear stories like this and like all the Epstein stuff and like, how all these like super wealthy billionaires and political people are entwangled in all of this stuff. And the human trafficking aspect of it, it's just like, something happens to the human psyche when you, when you attain that level of unlimited wealth and power where it just,

• 2:48:13Danny Jones?

  it, um, does something weird. It unlocks some weird thing in your brain.

• 2:48:17Speaker 01

  I mean, even, even if you know guys who, they're not super rich, just make a bit of money.

• 2:48:23Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:23Speaker 01

  And it changes their personality.

• 2:48:24Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:48:25Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. I mean, it does stuff to your brain.

• 2:48:28Danny Jones?

  Well, they say, they say there's a quote, the famous quote where it says money is the ultimate magnifying glass, where it magnifies your true inner self.

• 2:48:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:48:36Danny Jones?

  Like the more money you have, the more that core of who you are really comes out.

• 2:48:40Speaker 01

  But I guess it magnifies maybe bad things sometimes.

• 2:48:44Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:44Speaker 01

  But one of the, another thing that, that, uh, one trafficker was telling me about, about the.

• 2:48:51Danny Jones?

  Some people get a lot of money and do good. You know, we just don't hear those stories. You only hear the fucking dark ones.

• 2:48:56Speaker 01

  Well, they, they like, they like to try and amplify their altruism, but sometimes their altruism can be, you know, taken advantage of or misdirected or you, you wonder, but like, another thing, uh, trafficker told me was, as well as the money, he said, one time he was, he was, this one trafficker was, it was in, uh, Mexico City, a US based trafficker with, with a cousin. And he, uh, they were having, eating an expensive restaurant and he got out the money to pay and the cousin said, put that money away. Don't embarrass me. We don't pay for stuff here. And he said, what's better than having enough money to buy, you know, buy a million dollar watch is not paying for it. Because you have power. And one thing that these cartel guys

• 2:49:41Speaker 01

  get is just this power, this buzz of having power. Because of through violence, you achieve power.

• 2:49:47Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:49:48Speaker 01

  And I've even been hanging around sometimes with lower level guys. Like one time in, in El Salvador, just, uh, just was with one gang member going into like nightclubs with him. It's before Bukelley came in and, and put them all in prison.

• 2:50:01Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:50:03Speaker 01

  And you just, you just feel the buzz of power being with this guy. Walk into a club with this guy. And it was an MS 13 club. They owned the club as well.

• 2:50:10Danny Jones?

  Whoa, you were in this place?

• 2:50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I go with this guy and they're like, and I immediately like, you know, like, you know, like get a table for these guys. You just, you know, you, you, you're suddenly, you know, you're right, you know, you're not waiting in line. You've got power. You've got status. Uh, and, and that's one of the things that, that these guys.

• 2:50:27Danny Jones?

  It's intoxicating.

• 2:50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have some funny Bukelley stories about, actually one, one funny Bukelley story.

• 2:50:33Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah?

• 2:50:33Speaker 01

  Um, I interviewed, yeah, so Bukelley, obviously you're familiar with the whole Bukelley story. Yeah.

• 2:50:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah. For people who don't know, he's the, he's the leader of El Salvador, right? What's his back? What was, how did, how did that whole thing happen?

• 2:50:45Speaker 01

  He was an interesting character for a bunch of reasons, but basically Bukelley, so.

• 2:50:48Danny Jones?

  Big Bitcoin guy.

• 2:50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, and, uh, so Bukelley came into power. Um, first he was mayor and then he became president. And he incarcerated, did mass incarceration of gang members. Now.

• 2:51:08Speaker 01

  Like all of these things, a lot of angles to this this this story.

• 2:51:14Speaker 01

  He he became very, very popular. It's it's it's still very popular in El Salvador.

• 2:51:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:51:20Speaker 01

  Um, he, the the murder rate went from being one of the, you know, gradually, actually, from being one of the worst in the world to being one of the safest or lowest level of murders in the Americas. He incarcerated about one percent of the population of El Salvador over a year to add to the people already in prison. So if you imagine on a US scale, it'd be like if you look up three million people in the United States.

• 2:51:46Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:51:47Speaker 01

  As well as everyone who's in prison, you know, already.

• 2:51:51Speaker 01

  And then, you know, you say, oh, there's no, there's no more gang crime. We stopped it, you know, you'd be more in prison. Now, one of the things that that um

• 2:52:02Speaker 01

  that happened in El Salvador was that the gangs were very violent and antisocial.

• 2:52:10Speaker 01

  Psychotically or psychopathically antisocial. I'll give some examples of the way the gangs behaved, which led to this.

• 2:52:18Speaker 01

  So, you know, they they, you know, you have these these gangs who control neighborhoods. But they also, they start telling, you know, you you can't come in the neighborhood if you're from a different, you know, you have MS thirteen neighborhoods. And Eighteenth Street Barrio de Siocho neighborhoods. And if we control an MS thirteen neighborhood and you live in the Eighteenth Street neighborhood, you can't come into our neighborhood. And one woman I interviewed there, um, who I was introduced to by the um

• 2:52:50Speaker 01

  Doctors Without Borders, who'd been a case.

• 2:52:53Danny Jones?

  Doctors Without Borders?

• 2:52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is like, you know, medical.

• 2:52:56Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:52:57Speaker 01

  It's it's French, uh, MSF, Médecins Sans Français, something, Me- uh, Me- uh, Medicals In Fronteras, they call it in Spanish.

• 2:53:06Speaker 01

  This one woman, she had suffered a gang rape by by one of the gangs.

• 2:53:13Speaker 01

  And the reason was that she was living with her boyfriend in an Eighteenth Street controlled neighborhood.

• 2:53:20Speaker 01

  And she went to a house party with her her mother's birthday party in her old neighborhood, which was MS thirteen.

• 2:53:29Speaker 01

  And they came into the party with guns. And they took her. And her boyfriend was there and they put a gun to his head. And they gang raped her. So you're not allowed in this neighborhood. And the punishment, well, you know, and she suffered a gang rape.

• 2:53:47Danny Jones?

  Jesus.

• 2:53:48Speaker 01

  So when the gangs behave in this kind of way, and you get a guy who comes in and just says, I'm gonna lock everybody up. And like so many people in El Salvador have their story of something like that, you know, some, you know, some guy who's forced to pay money, you know, and and the the gangs beat him up and hit him with, you know, with a brick on his head and somebody else who lost a family member. I mean, they they behaved in a very, very brutal way for many years.

• 2:54:17Speaker 01

  Uh, the origins of this gang, have you, you familiar with the origins of the gang?

• 2:54:21Danny Jones?

  MS thirteen?

• 2:54:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, MS thirteen. So here's a, here's an interesting story. The MS thirteen were formed in Los Angeles in the nineteen eighties.

• 2:54:31Danny Jones?

  As all the best things are.

• 2:54:33Speaker 01

  Now, they were formed by Salvadoran refugees or Salvadoran kids who were coming over to escape the civil war in El Salvador back in the nineteen eighties, which was a US-backed military dictatorship against the left-wing guerrilla movement in El Salvador in the nineteen eighties. So many of them went over to the United States. And they'd be in these, you know, schools in the United States and they'd get bullied, often get bullied by a Mexican or Mexican-American gangs. Some of them joined up the Eighteenth Street, which allowed non-Mexicans in, the Barrio de Siocho. And some of them formed their own gang, the MS thirteen. Talked to one of the early members.

• 2:55:18Speaker 01

  He said that basically they were hanging around outside the seven eleven. They're basically teenage kids. And they became the MS, they initially were a Costona gang. They had like long hair. They were into heavy metal.

• 2:55:34Speaker 01

  Now, they have a symbol, which is this kind of, you know, the MS thirteen symbol.

• 2:55:40Speaker 01

  Or or like that, sorry, like they have the MS thirteen symbol.

• 2:55:42Danny Jones?

  Okay. That's what they, that's their gang sign?

• 2:55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and initially, initially it came because they'd come out, they'd be, the guy said, they'd go to these Black Sabbath concerts.

• 2:55:57Speaker 01

  At the time, it was for the the brief period when Ozzy Osbourne was not the Black Sabbath singer. And it was um, Italian-American guy.

• 2:56:07Danny Jones?

  Steve will find it.

• 2:56:08Speaker 01

  Uh, Ronnie, Ronnie, um, and he he created the the metal symbol like that.

• 2:56:15Speaker 04

  Oh, Dio?

• 2:56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 2:56:17Speaker 04

  Ronnie James Dio.

• 2:56:18Speaker 01

  Ronnie James Dio.

• 2:56:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:20Speaker 01

  So Ronnie James Dio, they got up Black Sabbath concerts. And and and they were kind of doing that, this kind of symbol. And that became.

• 2:56:29Danny Jones?

  No way.

• 2:56:31Speaker 01

  It's kind of crazy.

• 2:56:32Danny Jones?

  That's wacky.

• 2:56:33Speaker 01

  Stories, yeah. But then, anyway, MS thirteen, so they're formed in Los Angeles. They they they, they they start, initially, they were friends with the Eighteenth Street, the Barrio de Siocho. The Barrio Eighteen. They were friends and then they became, you know, they they they start this big fight.

• 2:56:51Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm. That's him?

• 2:56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, there he is.

• 2:56:55Danny Jones?

  Find somebody throwing up the MS thirteen gang sign.

• 2:56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at the MS thirteen, MS thirteen gang signs.

• 2:57:03Danny Jones?

  No way, dude.

• 2:57:09Speaker 04

  It's so hardcore.

• 2:57:10Danny Jones?

  And they stole that from Black Sabbath.

• 2:57:14Speaker 01

  They took it, I mean, like, you know, they they said they'd come back and they'd do this and it changed. This is what, this is this, this is the story these guys say. I mean, sometimes it's, it can be hard to.

• 2:57:21Danny Jones?

  Look at that guy down there. Look at all those tattoos on his face. That guy, blow him.

• 2:57:26Danny Jones?

  Fuck.

• 2:57:27Speaker 01

  So so, yes, I mean, there were some of the initial guys who really got into hardcore facial tattoos. And they became a very feared gang in the United States.

• 2:57:35Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm. Now, they're eating the dogs and the cats, remember?

• 2:57:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Trump got, yeah, he got.

• 2:57:42Danny Jones?

  They're eating the dogs.

• 2:57:44Speaker 01

  So they became quite a feared gang in the United States. Now, there was a big, there was a fight and and according to some stories, it began with one fight at a party.

• 2:57:51Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:57:52Speaker 01

  Which, between some Eighteenth, Barrio Eighteen and MS thirteen guys had a fight at a party in LA. And this led to this gang war happening between the two gangs, which carries on until this day.

• 2:58:06Speaker 01

  And then there's this really high numbers of deaths in Los Angeles from gang murder, like, early nineteen nineties. Remember those times, you know? Really high, really hardcore. So you started getting this clampdown. And loads of these kids were deported to El Salvador. And there were kids who'd gone, they'd gone to the United States often when they were like really young. Really didn't know about their homeland. They went back to look to El Salvador. And they had like tattoos on their face and they were like, you know, buff from being in prison.

• 2:58:39Speaker 01

  And they go there and all of the local street kids who'd just finished the civil war like latched on to them. So, oh, these, you know, and they became these really, they became a power back home in El Salvador. And really, and then the war carried on between the Barrio de Siocho and MS thirteen back in El Salvador and in Honduras and Guatemala. And I think one of the reasons that they they kept on, in fact, I talked to one, a very interesting Salvadoran uh uh, writer about this, who pointed this out to me.

• 2:59:13Speaker 01

  One of the reasons that they kept on this war is they actually, they need the war to prove themselves. So if you're in the gang,

• 2:59:26Speaker 01

  your status is achieved by killing people.

• 2:59:32Speaker 01

  So a lot of them, you talk to them and they're like, I've killed twenty five people, I've killed thirty people, I've killed thirty five, I've killed seventeen. They'll give you their number. It's different with some of the cartel guys, a bit different. They don't, they don't even know, remember how many people they've killed. They don't have it in the same way. But these gang members, it was very much a thing they'd tell you. It was their scorecard. And they need, and that gives them status in the gang. But you need an enemy. But both gangs need that. So they've, they've, they've, they've, they fight each other. And. Um. If you look at these, the way the gangs, so that they form these cliques.

• 3:00:13Speaker 01

  And the cliques often have like fifty people, kind of classic number. So it's kind of a, it's kind of like a, you know, the human band. It's like the, the basic core clique, fifty people, seventy people. You have a leader, top leader, number two. And then when they get big, they kind of break off and form another clique. So it becomes like a scheme.

• 3:00:34Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:00:35Speaker 01

  And, and, and then, you know, you create power, you have camaraderie. So some of these kids, if they've, now, one of the issues is, some of them will be, their parents would immigrate to the United States to work. And send money home and leave the kid back home, you know, with the grandparents, whatever. But then the kid doesn't have parents there.

• 3:00:57Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:00:57Speaker 01

  So then you look to the gang, you have camaraderie, you have protection. When one guy knew, actually, he was, you know, he was a, quite a brutal murderer. But he was abandoned by his parents. I mean, they were just very, very poor in Honduras, very, very poor, and just left him. And, and he just felt a lot of hate. His parents, you know, his mom abandoned him, went to the United States. You know, you can't, you know, somebody's really poor, can't afford to eat, just like, I'm, I'm going. He was left on the street and he, and he just had that kind of hate in his heart.

• 3:01:23Danny Jones?

  God.

• 3:01:24Speaker 01

  Uh, and he committed some horrific crimes. So, uh, so then you, you had these kind of gangs form now. Bukeli, so Bukeli comes in and he says, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna lock all these people up. Now, he didn't do it right away. This is a gradual thing. So first of all, he was actually in the left wing party of former guerrillas, the FMLN. And then he became independent. But in a funny story, when I interviewed him, I interviewed him in twenty seventeen when he was mayor of San Salvador.

• 3:01:52Speaker 01

  And at the time, he was, he wasn't, I'm gonna lock all these guys up. He was kind of peace and love. He was like, we need to help them, we need to build. Um, soccer pitches in the barrios and we need, and we need to kind of bring kind of love to these communities. And I interviewed him for a Time magazine thing. It was, um, thirty five interesting under thirty five year olds. He was thirty five at the time.

• 3:02:14Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:02:15Speaker 01

  He's kind of a lightweight piece. And as we were, we, we, we were talking to him and he's, he's a marketing guy and he's, he's a very smart. He studied marketing.

• 3:02:24Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:02:25Speaker 01

  Another interesting thing, he's, okay, his background, he is Palestinian Christian.

• 3:02:34Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 3:02:36Speaker 01

  His, and, and, well, his family, okay, this is, this is an interesting one. His family were Palestinian Christian.

• 3:02:44Speaker 01

  They moved to El Salvador. In El Salvador, his family, I think his, his, kind of his father or grandfather. Converted to Islam in El Salvador, which is.

• 3:02:55Danny Jones?

  Wow, what kind of a fucking backwards trajectory is that?

• 3:02:58Speaker 01

  What are the, what are the weird things? You're like a minority of being a Christian in Palestine to being.

• 3:03:03Danny Jones?

  You're a Christian in the Middle East to being a South American Islamist.

• 3:03:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Now Bukeli himself.

• 3:03:08Danny Jones?

  Or Muslim.

• 3:03:09Speaker 01

  Bukeli himself is a bit, uh, it's, it's, it's not completely clear, um, about his, his, his religion, but I know his brother, one of his brothers is Muslim. And I went to a mosque, his brother founded in San Salvador, and talked to, uh, the Imam of the, of the mosque. But anyway, he was an interesting guy. He's a marketing guy. I, I, I'm not, I'm not sure what his religion is. I mean, he could be. I, I don't think he's been very public about his own.

• 3:03:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:03:32Speaker 01

  Personal spiritual beliefs. He might, he might have become Christian or be Christian. I don't know. He, or he's, he's not totally clear about this. Uh, but he's, um, a very clever marketing guy. But when we were talking to him, he was, when we were interviewing him. He was talking to the photographer who we were filming as well and said, change the angle. I don't want this side of my face. I want this side of my face.

• 3:03:58Speaker 01

  And so there's a little bit of tension, you know, he's on his, you know, when you have the interviewee barking orders at the camera guy, that can create some tension.

• 3:04:04Danny Jones?

  Your camera guy.

• 3:04:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a bit of tension there, but it was fine. I gave it, it was quite a, you know, soft interview. And then he left. I saw the camera guy looking a bit, um, you know, looking a bit troubled. I said, you go. He said, Bukeli just took my wallet.

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• 3:04:51Speaker 01

  So what do you mean? He said, he said he had his wallet on the table. I mean, it was kind of slack of the guy to do this. I mean, this is like a hardcore camera guy who's been, you know, around the world and stuff, but he was filming and left his wallet on the table. I don't know why he didn't say anything at the moment, but like. Bukeli grabbed his wallet and took it. I said, well, was there anything in your wallet? He said, my, my ID, my money, my cards. It's a bit strange.

• 3:05:16Danny Jones?

  He didn't want to say nothing?

• 3:05:17Speaker 01

  Yes, it's.

• 3:05:18Danny Jones?

  Like, yo, wrong wallet, buddy.

• 3:05:21Speaker 01

  So we asked, so we asked the secretary, I said, I think, uh, maybe, uh, he accidentally took the wallet. And then it was sent back to us. And I think, I think he just did it just, just to fuck with us. Just to fuck with a guy because there's a bit of tension with the camera guy and he's sorry, he just, he just did it. I imagine, I mean, he could have seen it. Was that my wallet? But I don't know. But anyway, like, you know, so yeah, it's a funny Bukeli story.

• 3:05:46Danny Jones?

  That's hilarious.

• 3:05:47Speaker 01

  But Bukeli, he's, um, he came in, after that, he, he went independent. He created his own political party.

• 3:05:54Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:05:55Speaker 01

  He basically completely, um, the entire political system, um, in El Salvador caved under him. Um, and then he said, I'm, I'm gonna lock up all of the gang members. And this was exceptionally popular. Now.

• 3:06:13Speaker 01

  He, he does, um, I mean, it, it's hardcore. I mean, you talk to mothers whose kids are in prison. The, the majority are likely gang members, but there could be some innocents there as well.

• 3:06:26Danny Jones?

  Hmm. The photos are insane of that prison.

• 3:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now also, you have people who can be gang, you know, like basically just being a gang member, you can get like long, I mean, decades in prison. For simply being a gang member.

• 3:06:40Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:06:41Speaker 01

  I mean, this is, this is like saying we're gonna use, you know, hardcore incarceration. And as well as that, you have cases like, uh, some journalist friends from El Salvador. Colleagues, good journalists who have had to flee the country. Because they, you know, they're concerned about, once you, once you have somebody with that kind of power.

• 3:07:05Danny Jones?

  Hmm. A journalist would be afraid.

• 3:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, journalists.

• 3:07:08Danny Jones?

  But why?

• 3:07:09Speaker 01

  They, they could be incarcerated. I mean, they're saying that they're getting accused of, you know, you can start like, you know, if you have a very powerful. Um, a president who's very, very popular and very powerful.

• 3:07:21Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:07:21Speaker 01

  And will start harassing journalists and, and various ones have left the country.

• 3:07:30Speaker 01

  I mean, also you go across Central America, Nicaragua. It's actually a worse situation for journalists there. Loads of journalists have had to flee Nicaragua. Because of the Ortega government there.

• 3:07:41Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:07:41Speaker 01

  But various people have fled. So on the, on the, on the flip side, uh, people are concerned about, you know, you know, he's become authoritarian.

• 3:07:48Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:07:49Speaker 01

  But, you know, he said, these things are complicated. And like, people suffered massively under the gangs. And this guy provided a solution. And most people still like the guy for that.

• 3:08:04Danny Jones?

  It's wild. It's crazy down there. How, there's so many, it's the crazy, crazy thing about it is like, there's so many different countries packed into such a little tight area.

• 3:08:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:08:13Danny Jones?

  You know, and all the crime that crosses the borders and, you know, who knows? How much they work together or they don't and like which ones are in favor with the United States and which ones aren't. And like you said earlier, the guy who just got, uh, the Honduran leader who just got pardoned.

• 3:08:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:08:32Danny Jones?

  Like, man, it's a fricking hornet's nest of shit going on down there.

• 3:08:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:08:36Danny Jones?

  What is it like? So where you're at in Mexico, um, I imagine that you work with a lot of other journalists similar to yourself. Like, what is it like for you guys down there? Do you guys foresee? A situation where you guys would have to leave Mexico? Or do you feel like it's a pretty safe, long-term bet that you can stay down there and keep pursuing what you're doing?

• 3:08:59Speaker 01

  So in Mexico, you have issues with, um, the cartels. And with the government or with different, um, government fig, political, political figures. So if you look in Mexico, you've had more than a hundred and fifty, quite a lot more than a hundred and fifty journalists murdered. Since two thousand. Um, among the journalists who have been murdered um for different situations, but I'll give one story of a guy I knew quite well, which was Javier Valdez.

• 3:09:38Speaker 01

  And Javier Valdez uh was a journalist in Culiacan, Sinaloa, who covered the drug cartels, um was a fantastic writer, you know, really uh really amazing pen, you know, really amazing writer, almost like a Norman Mailer kind of um, you know, real, real kind of uh real voice, real literary voice and really prolific. He wrote like eight books about this stuff.

• 3:10:03Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 3:10:04Speaker 01

  The first time I met him, I was in Sinaloa and somebody uh gave me his phone number. And I'd never met him before. I just phoned him up and said, oh, I'm in Sinaloa doing some reporting. Can I meet you? And he said, sure, yeah, meet me in this cantina called El Guayabo, the cantina. And I went in there in the evening and he was by himself at a table, just by himself with a bottle of whiskey in a glass. Just like down.

• 3:10:35Danny Jones?

  Seen some shit, huh?

• 3:10:37Speaker 01

  So I sat down with him and we talked and got drunk. Uh, we cowed on to like two in the morning and then on the way back, we were like singing. I remember at the time it was uh Amy Winehouse. Yeah, we were singing, we were singing along in his car. Um, but, but, but a great guy, prolific journalist. And then in two thousand seventeen, he was reporting on the turf war at the time between the Chapitos and a guy called El Esenciado, El Damas or Lopez.

• 3:11:12Danny Jones?

  Oh, I've heard of him.

• 3:11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11:13Danny Jones?

  I think Luis told me about him.

• 3:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, he has a son called El Mini Leek, who.

• 3:11:17Danny Jones?

  El Mini Leek was his son.

• 3:11:18Speaker 01

  His son, who, who.

• 3:11:19Danny Jones?

  He was the security guy for the Chapitos, right?

• 3:11:21Speaker 01

  Who Luis interviewed. He was, he was a trafficker in his wife. Yeah, he was a like uh um, the security guy was El Nini.

• 3:11:27Danny Jones?

  El Nini.

• 3:11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a security guy.

• 3:11:29Danny Jones?

  Big, big social media guy.

• 3:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so the um, so El Esenciado, this turf war was happening. And then El Esenciado contacted Javier Valdez at his newspaper. And Javier Valdez went to a, a, a car and was given, had an interview with him, like his, his lieutenant, his, his, his guy, the El, uh, the Esenciado's guy gave the phone to Javier and he gave him an interview and gave him some statements about the Chapitos,

• 3:12:11Speaker 01

  including stuff where he was saying that the Chapitos, you know, they uh, some of the most cutting quotes he gave were like, these guys don't have like real friends, they're like sick with power. So they were getting ready to publish and it's a print, it's a, it's a weekly printed newspaper called Rio Doce. They were getting ready to publish and as they were getting ready to publish, Javier was reached out to by the Chapitos. And he said, I wanna meet you. And he said, I'll meet you in the cantina, El Guayabo, the same cantina where I went to. Great cantina. And the Chapitos guy came to him and said, look, you know, you can't publish this story.

• 3:12:56Speaker 01

  You know, that can't go out. You can't publish a guy attacking our leaders.

• 3:13:02Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:13:03Speaker 01

  And Javier said, it's too late. It's been printed. You know, partly he was like, it has been printed, it is too late. But also he was like, I don't wanna just give in to what these guys say, what we can print, what we can't print. So he says, it's too late. It's going out tomorrow. So the guy, the next day, the delivery trucks were going out and there was cartel guys following the delivery, delivery trucks. And when they arrived, the cartel guys would borrow the newspapers. So they'd stop the newspaper going out to the public.

• 3:13:40Danny Jones?

  No way.

• 3:13:42Speaker 01

  So they weren't reading this. So, you know, that happened and afterwards Javier was, you know, under um, you know, he was shocked, but he was like, okay, it seems to have passed now. And then El Esenciado was arrested in Mexico City. Part of, part of the interview which Javier had done was reprinted in a big Mexican national newspaper called La Jornada. And then he was murdered uh on lunch break, coming out of his office to go and buy lunch.

• 3:14:26Speaker 01

  And assassins came and shot him.

• 3:14:28Danny Jones?

  Fuck.

• 3:14:30Speaker 01

  Twelve bullets. And now the Mexican federal, uh, Mexican federal prosecutor said that the guy who did this was the, was the son of Esenciado, El, El Mini Leek.

• 3:14:44Danny Jones?

  El Mini Leek was the, it was his son?

• 3:14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, who, it was Mini Leek who ordered the murder.

• 3:14:49Danny Jones?

  Ah, okay.

• 3:14:51Speaker 01

  But Mini Leek, in the interview with Chaparro, with Luis Chaparro, denied that and said, no, it was the Chapitos who ordered that murder and they paid a million dollars to the federal prosecutor to, to make it, him be accused. You know, I, I don't know.

• 3:15:08Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:15:09Speaker 01

  You know, I can have my suspicions, but you know, but yeah, it was, it was uh, you know, and he was perhaps the most prolific of, of the Mexican journalists being murdered, but there's been many, many stories. Um, very sad, his murder. Um, I met his wife, his son. His son wrote a very touching piece um after his dad's murder. His son, who was like eighteen, nineteen, and was saying like, um, you know, I looked for you, dad. You know, I can't find you. So, you know, every time, that's a life. And, you know, I mean, there's been a lot of cases.

• 3:15:50Danny Jones?

  God.

• 3:15:51Speaker 01

  And a lot, a lot of journalists who have fled the country.

• 3:15:53Danny Jones?

  What do you, what do you, what is your plan? Do you plan on staying there for the foreseeable future? Or do you wanna stay there for the rest of your life?

• 3:16:00Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know. Um, you know, to have to take, sometimes take things, you know, a day at a time or a month at a time or a year at a time.

• 3:16:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:09Speaker 01

  Um, Mexico's a beautiful country and I do think in the long term, um, it can have a good future. I think in the long term, um, I feel this level of violence is a stage and it won't last forever. Um, but that's, you know, that's a feeling. There was a guy who was head of the Mexican intelligence agency, who say, and maybe there's not a scientific reason for this, but he, but he said, I think this violence would be like a thirty year war.

• 3:16:51Speaker 01

  And for some reason that chimes as being something that could be true, like a thirty year war.

• 3:16:58Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:16:59Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know, maybe that's just because of phrases, the historical war, the thirty year war, so it kind of, but you feel like, you know, a generation, a generation of, of violence.

• 3:17:07Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:17:08Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and this stuff ends, you know, I don't know if I wanna go back to England. It's not looking great in England right now.

• 3:17:16Danny Jones?

  No.

• 3:17:16Speaker 01

  For a bunch of reasons.

• 3:17:17Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:17:18Speaker 01

  It's looking.

• 3:17:18Danny Jones?

  What about the US?

• 3:17:20Speaker 01

  To live here?

• 3:17:21Danny Jones?

  Yeah. What do you think about, well, not only what is your view, but what, what is your colleagues and the people you live around? Like, what is their view of the US?

• 3:17:30Speaker 01

  Uh, you mean, you mean more like the Mexican colleagues or like, or like?

• 3:17:35Danny Jones?

  Yeah, Mexican colleagues, anyone. What is the, what is like the general vibe or sentiment from people that you run into every day about the United States?

• 3:17:45Speaker 01

  I mean, my own view about the United States, I mean, I love the United States. You know, I've been coming here for, for thirty years and it's, it's a beautiful country. I, I, I think it's a, it's an amazing country. Um, it's got bad sides uh and some very bad sides, some very dark sides, like any country. And it's the kind of uh, uh, power of the world. It's also a great country and I always, always love to come here. Uh, within Mexico, I would say there's a mix of, of views within Mexico.

• 3:18:15Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:18:15Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, you have people who, you know, obviously many, many people who have been in the United States from Mexico and who love many aspects of the United States. Uh, but you also, you have a certain um anti-gringoism as well.

• 3:18:33Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:18:35Speaker 01

  There's uh been a big uh increase in the number of Americans living in Mexico in certain neighborhoods in Mexico City. Some of these really nice neighborhoods I was talking about, Condesa, Roma, digital nomads. So there's been like an anti-gringo movement. There's even marches saying like, gringos out.

• 3:18:55Danny Jones?

  No way.

• 3:18:55Speaker 01

  And people coming out with some stuff like, you know, you know, send them out all this kind of stuff, you know, and you have like, you can, you hear quite xenophobic stuff sometimes. But then you get that in every country. I mean, you can find people here.

• 3:19:07Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 3:19:07Speaker 01

  You know, or, or in England, people with like really xenophobic opinions and, and you know, people, humans are, you know, are complicated.

• 3:19:13Danny Jones?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 3:19:15Speaker 01

  Um, there's um, in the political sense, with this pressure of Trump or people in the Trump administration saying they want to do missile strikes in Mexico, and then with the case of the CIA agents. So, you know, when, when the CIA agents um died in um, in April, um, this starts sparking out this idea of there's gonna be foreign intervention, there's gonna be a CIA coup in Mexico. And so this idea like, you know, especially after Venezuela, you know, they, they took out Maduro, they're gonna take out President Claudia Sheinbaum, who's the president of Mexico, and these kind of things are said.

• 3:19:58Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:19:59Speaker 01

  The CIA agents, so they were um, uh, they were on an operation to raid a crystal meth lab in the mountains of Chihuahua state. So a few hundred miles south of the Texas border. They were, yeah, this is the lab they, they raided.

• 3:20:23Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 3:20:25Speaker 01

  And they.

• 3:20:26Danny Jones?

  It's like an outdoor factory.

• 3:20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huge lab, huge lab. So, um, likely spotted with CIA drone, CIA intel.

• 3:20:38Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:20:40Speaker 01

  And when they got there, now the CIA agents or operatives, because in CIA term itself, you know, CIA, you know, you're not like an FBI agent. In CIA terminology, an agent is somebody.

• 3:20:55Danny Jones?

  Recruited.

• 3:20:56Speaker 01

  The agency is using and somebody who works directly for the CIA is a CIA officer.

• 3:21:01Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:21:01Speaker 01

  Operative. Now, these were, um.

• 3:21:04Danny Jones?

  Not a card carrying employee, just but somebody who was recruited.

• 3:21:08Speaker 01

  That that's what agent is, but in these case, these guys were.

• 3:21:11Danny Jones?

  Officers.

• 3:21:12Speaker 01

  Direct oper- now operatives, because there's also within the CIA.

• 3:21:17Speaker 01

  You have CIA, um, officers who are, have gone through Langley.

• 3:21:23Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:21:23Speaker 01

  Full time payroll. We have a lot of CIA people who are, um, contracted. They're contractors, including US military guys.

• 3:21:36Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:21:37Speaker 01

  Um, they can be US special forces.

• 3:21:39Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:21:40Speaker 01

  They can then be taken by the CIA.

• 3:21:42Danny Jones?

  Like ground branch type people.

• 3:21:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. Now, this is what these guys were like. Now, but sometimes those people can be direct, full time employees. Sometimes for different reasons, they can be on contract with the CIA.

• 3:21:56Danny Jones?

  Right. Like what we saw during Iran contra.

• 3:21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Although sometimes even some people who are like more more direct. It's it's not totally clear if these guys were were direct, full time payroll officers. Or if they were, uh, on contract, but they were CIA out of, working out of, um, an office in Monterrey. But they were dressed in US, in, sorry, in Mexican Chihuahua state, um, officer uniforms.

• 3:22:26Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:22:26Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a, there's an agency in Chihuahua called the Agency of State Investigations, the AEI. And the Spanish acronym, they were wearing their uniforms.

• 3:22:40Speaker 01

  So they were wearing their uniforms and there was four of these guys on the operation. Now, when they got to the lab, which is very far out in the mountains in Mexico. And they got there and there was nobody there, no drug traffickers there and no meth. There was the lab was there with the the main product and the guys had gone.

• 3:23:07Speaker 01

  Probably from information being leaked by somebody in the Mexican law enforcement. Although they also have guys on the roads who are seeing convoy coming and.

• 3:23:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:23:20Speaker 01

  Setting off, but you know, they may maybe had a bit of time, maybe both, both things.

• 3:23:25Speaker 01

  So they go in there, they spend a long time, you know, a long time. It's a huge lab. If it's a mega super lab. That photo you saw is only one part of it. It's like very, very, it's a real huge super lab making crystal meth.

• 3:23:36Danny Jones?

  Find more pictures of that, thank you, Steve.

• 3:23:39Speaker 01

  And one of the things that this, you know, one guy who was a, who was a former ICE member.

• 3:23:45Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:23:46Speaker 01

  And was telling me about, he used to go on, on raids dressed as, as like Mexican law enforcement. This is a practice going back years. One of the reasons that the, that the United States officers want to go on these raids. Dressed up. Now, also when Chapo was arrested for the second time.

• 3:24:07Speaker 01

  It's a huge complex area.

• 3:24:09Danny Jones?

  Well, that's a tiny, that's a very small area.

• 3:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, this, this, this thing was sprawling over an area. It was like, it was actually kind of like, almost like a, a, a whole series of linked labs.

• 3:24:19Danny Jones?

  Wow, in the forest.

• 3:24:24Speaker 01

  So one of the reasons they said that the, the US, uh, agents, so they want to go on these, these, these raids, they want to make sure it's actually busted. That's their justification for this stuff. And when El Chapo was arrested for the second of three times, because El Chapo was arrested, then escaped from prison.

• 3:24:42Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:24:43Speaker 01

  Then he was arrested again, then he escaped again, then he was arrested a third time and sentenced. The second time he was arrested, which was in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, there was two DEA agents on that operation. One who waited outside and one who went in with him dressed in Mexican marine uniform and carrying a gun. So this stuff has been going on for some time.

• 3:25:07Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:25:08Speaker 01

  But these CIA operatives were on this raid in, uh, in Chihuahua.

• 3:25:18Speaker 01

  And driving back, they were, they were divided in two, there was four of them divided in two vehicles. And two of them were in a vehicle with the head of the AEI agency, the Mexican agency and a driver. And they were in a big convoy at like one in the morning, heading back to the city of Parral, which is a city in southern Chihuahua.

• 3:25:41Speaker 01

  Driving fast on these mountain roads.

• 3:25:46Speaker 01

  And they went along near a place known as Polanco. It's not, there's also a Polanco in Mexico City, but it's a Polanco, a village in, uh, in Chihuahua.

• 3:25:55Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:25:55Speaker 01

  Settlement, you know, really small bit. Going there, round a corner, tough corner. In the sec- believe on the second vehicle in the convoy.

• 3:26:06Speaker 01

  And the first vehicle might have broken a bit too hard and they had, they were like, they had to suddenly break and they went over the edge of a ravine. And went down. And it was about a half hour to climb down the ravine to where the, the vehicle went and, and, and exploded.

• 3:26:22Danny Jones?

  Oh, shit.

• 3:26:24Speaker 01

  And the two, uh, CIA operatives and the others died. Now, initially.

• 3:26:31Speaker 01

  This according, you know, to people familiar with this, you hear a lot of, a lot of stories circling around about this. They said that they were deciding, what should we do about this? Should we just bury the bodies and like pretend this never happened?

• 3:26:44Speaker 01

  And then that was like, no.

• 3:26:45Danny Jones?

  Who, who was, was thinking about this?

• 3:26:48Speaker 01

  Discussion among the American and.

• 3:26:51Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:26:52Speaker 01

  Mexican people there.

• 3:26:53Danny Jones?

  The people who are aware of these guys being.

• 3:26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, and some, some of the Mexicans there, I mean, people didn't.

• 3:27:02Speaker 01

  The senior AEI people knew about this, but some of these also soldiers on the soldiers, they might not even known exactly who the Americans were. They could tell they were Americans. But they weren't really sure who this guy was, you know, they think they're DA or they're not really sure, they just think they're Americans coming on this.

• 3:27:18Speaker 01

  Eventually, they, um, said, okay, we, we, we've got to, um, take it back. And that afternoon, the US ambassador. To Mexico, Ronald Johnson, who's a former CIA operative officer himself.

• 3:27:33Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:27:34Speaker 01

  Um, and former special forces guy, uh, or former military guy. Um, announced that two US embassy personnel had died and it very quickly came out they were CIA. Now, when that came out, that caused a big splash. Like, what are the CIA doing in Mexico? What are they up to? At the same time that's happening, you've got like, you know, there's the, you know, that was April twenty second. On January the third, you'd had the United States take out Nicolas Maduro.

• 3:28:04Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:28:05Speaker 01

  Now, uh, uh, at the same time, you've got the US, uh, charging Mexican governors working with drug traffickers.

• 3:28:12Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:28:13Speaker 01

  The same time, we've got the history of, uh, the CIA working with drug traffickers in like, um, you know, in the contra, Iran contra.

• 3:28:21Danny Jones?

  Felix Rodriguez.

• 3:28:22Speaker 01

  You've got various things happening. Um, now, I don't think the CIA is, is right now looking for a coup in Mexico. I think the. I think what they are doing, I think Trump on January twentieth, when he came back, twenty twentieth, two thousand twenty five. Very quickly said, well, I want the CIA involved in this fight against drug traffickers. The CIA are more deeply involved. But for a lot of people out there, this just all looks extremely suspicious. What are these CIA guys doing down in Mexico? Then you have some guys died in an explosion in a, in a car, some drug traffickers, supposedly in the car near Mexico City.

• 3:29:07Speaker 01

  And then this story came out, that was a CIA op, or it was a CIA op teaching Mexican. Eight officers to do a car bomb, which is difficult to know if that's true.

• 3:29:20Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:29:20Speaker 01

  Or are they leaking that as being there to try and, you know, there's a lot of weird stuff happening.

• 3:29:25Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:29:26Speaker 01

  The CIA also doing a bunch of, there are other, other, other, other things they are doing around in, in like, they're like grabbing like, um. Ecuadorian fishermen, there's like weird boats of like CIA guys, uh, you know, grabbing, uh, fishermen that have come out of Ecuador. Which they think could be drug traffickers. So they're doing a bunch of crazy ops around the place.

• 3:29:45Danny Jones?

  Wow, man.

• 3:29:50Danny Jones?

  That's it's it's crazy. It's crazy that you're uh you've been able to do to keep track of all this stuff and to manage like all the sources and wrangle all these stories for so long, man. Does it ever like I assume that you have a bunch of sources that you that you keep anonymous, right, that are like tied to a lot of the cartels that you can never talk about, right?

• 3:30:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I mean,

• 3:30:17Speaker 01

  for a long time, uh, when I first began doing cartel stuff, and I'd be interviewing things like hitmen, guys in prison, and and and anonymous stories about about that. Now, I'd often been in Mexico, but not working for Mexican media, working more for international media and then writing books.

• 3:30:41Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:30:42Speaker 01

  Be looking at trying to look at stuff that's not going to get me kicked out of the country or chased out of the country. Um, you know, initially, when I did stories like hitmen describing um what goes on in their own mind, when they carry out hits, how they got into this, what their lifestyles like, and this kind of thing. Um, and I mean, people tell you crazy stories, you know, you know, one guy, one hitman was telling me when he was he did his first hit, actually, it was a Colombian hitman, but still active when I interviewed him in in Medellin. He did his first hit,

• 3:31:19Speaker 01

  and he had a mentor who was like teaching him how to do hits. And did his first hit on the back of a motorbike. And they went past a guy and he, you know, he shot the guy and he got too close. And the guy's kind of body and brains kind of splattered over him.

• 3:31:39Speaker 01

  And he had nightmares about it. He'd go back and have nightmares about this this hit he did. You know, felt bad about it. But they said afterwards, he kind of got used to it and.

• 3:31:48Danny Jones?

  He just become numb to it after a while.

• 3:31:50Speaker 01

  And he said, like, he um he'd go out and do hits. And he said, when he went out, he want to, you know, be straight and have his five senses. But afterwards, he'd come back, smoke some weed, play computer games. You know, he's gonna, you know, killed someone, done this stuff.

• 3:32:07Danny Jones?

  God, dude.

• 3:32:08Speaker 01

  So initially, I did a lot of that stuff. Uh, and then I, over the years, you know, now often I try to do a lot of stuff with people on record if I'm doing, you know, big stuff.

• 3:32:21Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:21Speaker 01

  Uh, because I feel like there's a limit to anonymous sources. So like, you know, with the with the drug traffickers, you know, you want to see stuff solid on records. There's a lot of there's a lot of now ex drug traffickers who who talk on record.

• 3:32:34Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:32:35Speaker 01

  So, you know, again, with like MS thirteen guys, um, I interviewed quite high ranking guys on on record who who then got into different processes. I interviewed, you know, one of the founders of the of the of the commander in Brazil on record. I interviewed, you know, some of these big Mexican traffickers, some of the US based ones. People like Margarito Flores, um, and and various people who who will talk on record about this stuff.

• 3:33:02Danny Jones?

  I imagine it's a very blurry line that you have to dance, you know,

• 3:33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33:07Danny Jones?

  when you're dealing with these sources and, you know, trying to make sure you don't put yourself in danger or put them in danger, which could in turn put you in danger, right? Like, it's gotta be.

• 3:33:17Speaker 01

  Often them, often like, well, often it's, um, so a lot of cartel sources. Now, I don't like to keep a lot of these sources too close.

• 3:33:31Speaker 01

  Uh, in that, like a lot of this thing, you know, you can, for a story, you go out and be friendly with people. We don't really want to maintain friendships all the time.

• 3:33:39Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:33:41Speaker 01

  I'm walking around and I'm, you know, going for breakfast, trying to get a phone call. Some of these guys in prison, and I can, some of these guys I can generally get on well with. You know, but like, you've got to, you know, try and keep a distance. Someone, I'm going for breakfast, some guy from prison is calling me up. And sometimes some of these guys are in prison with a cellphone and they're bored and they can sit and talk all day, you know, like.

• 3:33:59Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 3:34:00Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, some of these guys, you know, they're they're these interesting guys who who have a lot of stuff to say. Um, like Fernando Fernando Blenji or somebody I talked to a lot in prison. He was finally released. He was interesting, a very interesting case. He like he had airplanes and uh, again, somebody on, I managed to quote on record. After Al Mencho died, I did a story for New Yorker about the case. So I managed to have two uh, guys on a record who taught who'd met personally Al Mencho could describe what it was like to traffickers who'd worked with him personally. And again, I want to try and put this stuff to have to have uh to show that this stuff is, you know, you can check this stuff out.

• 3:34:34Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:34:34Speaker 01

  Sources. But as well at the time, there's this huge amount of anonymous sources and difficult stuff to deal with.

• 3:34:41Speaker 01

  There's cases, uh, hot stuff to deal with. I I was given

• 3:34:48Speaker 01

  the phone records of a Plaza, which is a territory boss of the Jalisco New Generation cartel. And when I mean the phone records, somebody in the Mexican Federal Agency had arrested this guy and taken two of his cellphones.

• 3:35:11Speaker 01

  And taken all of the messages and videos and photos and done an analysis of all of that. And with that, he done a very, very good report

• 3:35:25Speaker 01

  of the internal workings of a Plaza boss, a territory boss.

• 3:35:33Speaker 01

  However, this guy did this very, very good report. They never did anything with it. They repressed it because it showed corruption inside the Mexican government.

• 3:35:45Speaker 01

  And this guy was eventually then, you know, he leaked it to me, but he was also looking at, you know, running from Mexico or claiming asylum. The guy, the federal agent who had this stuff.

• 3:35:55Speaker 01

  I published a story on this and had the records. Now, these are hot records to have, like.

• 3:36:01Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:36:01Speaker 01

  Also because they've got names of corrupt.

• 3:36:05Danny Jones?

  Officials.

• 3:36:06Speaker 01

  Cops, corrupt officials, but also the guy himself, who it's about, you know, what's his status now? He get get out of prison, he's going to be pissed off that you published his phone records. So I was very careful, like, how can I publish this but try not to give too many names? Now, sometimes, uh, people are actually who who leak stuff is because they want to get their revenge on somebody else.

• 3:36:34Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:36:34Speaker 01

  Like, somebody is annoyed because their boss was corrupt and they want to leak stuff to get their boss.

• 3:36:41Danny Jones?

  And they just want to use you.

• 3:36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're like annoyed, oh, why didn't you publish the guy's name? You know, I gave you this stuff, you didn't publish the guy's name. You were like, but like, it's like, well, I I I want to live.

• 3:36:51Danny Jones?

  Yeah, he doesn't give a fuck about you. Yeah.

• 3:36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever, you know, they got their own, but they're offering you information.

• 3:36:56Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:36:57Speaker 01

  And there are, again, some of the some of the Mexican journalists are very aggressive, very, very aggressive about the really getting to the kind of in, you know, fighting inside Mexico and and publishing names and accusations. Some of them have fled the country because of that. But, you know, they're they're very ballsy about this stuff. A lot of the Mexican press really like this kind of this this infighting between stuff and accusations. Uh, but I was more like, did it more as analysis of understanding, okay, this is what goes on in in in a a Plaza boss's phone, and it gives you a real window into their life.

• 3:37:30Speaker 01

  And you see this Plaza boss. Now, Plaza bosses, so a boss of a territory. So in the cartels, you have control of a certain turf, control of a territory. This was a couple of towns.

• 3:37:45Speaker 01

  So, you know, still there's a guy who commands, you know, like, you know, and it had his, he had payrolls. Payrolls of hitmen, payrolls of officials. Now, some, uh.

• 3:37:59Danny Jones?

  Where did the hitmen get paid?

• 3:38:00Speaker 01

  Low, it was like low amounts. I mean, we're talking about, I have to remember exactly, but things like, if I remember correctly, things like four hundred dollars a month.

• 3:38:09Danny Jones?

  Oh, my god.

• 3:38:10Speaker 01

  Hundred dollars a week. These are like small country towns in Mexico, like hundred bucks a week. Um, you know, these guys, by that standard, they think, okay. But again, a lot of Narcos, that's one of the problems with the glamorous side of we see like in Narcos series, which is a good series.

• 3:38:31Speaker 01

  But the glamorous side we see of that, of the top level guys with beautiful girlfriends and mansions. Oh, wow, I'd love to live like that.

• 3:38:39Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:38:39Speaker 01

  But that's not how most of them live.

• 3:38:42Speaker 01

  It's like anything, the Narcos world has a world of all kinds of different social classes, the same as the legitimate world, you know, you look at Coca-Cola. You know, the the the head of Coca-Cola, you know, is rich, but there's a bunch of guys who are working.

• 3:38:57Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:38:59Speaker 01

  But anyway, so this guy, this guy's a, you know, he had he had a bunch of hitmen, but also he had police on his payroll. He had he had military guys, he had federal agents. He was selling uh crystal meth, marijuana and cocaine at local level. Uh, and then he had some stuff, which is pretty nasty stuff to see, which is on his phone, witness statements. So the police on his payroll, somebody who's a witness goes to the police with something, and the police give that witness statement straight to the cartel.

• 3:39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:39:36Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 3:39:37Speaker 01

  So that's.

• 3:39:37Danny Jones?

  That is fucking crazy.

• 3:39:40Speaker 01

  But as well as that, you see this guy. You see he's kind of, he had, he had, he had two cell phones. So you can see one was more work and one was more family orientated.

• 3:39:48Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 3:39:49Speaker 01

  And then he had um also stuff like, so you see the stuff he's dealing with. You see messages of a phone just tells you a story. Like if I was looking to, you know, Danny Jones's phone, you see it's kind of crazy. All the messages, you know, you know.

• 3:40:00Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:40:01Speaker 01

  You know, this guest coming on, this guest can't make it, this is happening as well as your like this social life's happening, this part is happening to me. You know, all these things you're dealing with in your life.

• 3:40:08Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:40:09Speaker 01

  Or the, or the head of a company. And this guy's dealing with like, so he's dealing with like, uh, this point has got no um cocaine and we need a re-up. That's like one thing he's dealing with.

• 3:40:19Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:40:19Speaker 01

  But also he's dealing with um, oh, here's a bunch of photographs from this crime scene. That we were sent by our police guy who's on our payroll, who's got photographs of the bodies done by our rivals. Okay? And then he's got stuff he's dealing with where he's getting a, a gun plated in gold. And he's talking to a guy who does that, who's sending him photographs of like options. So he can hire a guy to, to, to, to like plate his, his gun in gold. Then he's got somebody saying, um, we've got a problem with thieves at the marketplace.

• 3:40:59Speaker 01

  Like a regular guy, but who's involved in territory and like send. And he's like, yeah, deal with, we, we, we'll deal with that. Like basically what the cartel is offering there is. We'll, we will kill antisocial criminals on our territory. So one of the things that cartels end up doing in these territories. Is becoming like, well, we're with the warlords, with the run, with the ones who control this territory.

• 3:41:29Danny Jones?

  You wanna commit crime that doesn't benefit us, you're dead meat.

• 3:41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, I mean, you wanna get into some, some really brutal stuff.

• 3:41:37Speaker 01

  There was one video around. So another thing that of, often the, the, the two particular crimes. They will execute people for or will punish them. Sometimes can be like making people walk around the street naked. With a sign saying, um, I'm a thief, you know, soy ratero, Spanish. Another uh one they will sometimes punish people for is for alleged.

• 3:42:08Speaker 01

  And there was one video circulating in.

• 3:42:16Speaker 01

  Uh, probably from a place in Mexico state by a cartel group. Where they got a guy accused of.

• 3:42:27Speaker 01

  And they set a dog to devour his genitals.

• 3:42:30Danny Jones?

  Jesus.

• 3:42:32Speaker 01

  And that was there.

• 3:42:35Danny Jones?

  It's like some Game of Thrones level shit.

• 3:42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42:38Danny Jones?

  And they had it on video?

• 3:42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had a video.

• 3:42:41Danny Jones?

  Oh my god. That is fucking brutal, dude. How did they get the dog to eat his genitals? They rub it like in peanut butter or something?

• 3:42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:42:53Danny Jones?

  Footage taken by one, uh, one of the attackers shows how the alleged wrist. Was castrated by the ravenous dog, leaving nothing but a gaping raw wound. It was reported by local media in twenty nineteen that a criminal gang caught the man after he allegedly R-worded a woman.

• 3:43:14Danny Jones?

  Wow, god.

• 3:43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so that's, that's, I mean, that's, that's rough.

• 3:43:23Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 3:43:23Speaker 01

  That's very rough justice.

• 3:43:24Danny Jones?

  What's um, we had Hector Borelas on the show a couple of months back and he was showing us this footage of. A guy who they, they cut his heart out while he was alive. And they had it all on video and like they had his heart like beating in their hand and they watched him die like.

• 3:43:43Danny Jones?

  Terrifying stuff.

• 3:43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things you could say is that like.

• 3:43:51Speaker 01

  They both, they both cause a lot of violence, but they react to this lack of law enforcement. So you see in these places, and this goes beyond Mexico to various places in Latin America and the Caribbean. Where the cartels, they've got different names, you know, cartels, gangs, commandos in Brazil, posse in Jamaica.

• 3:44:16Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:44:18Speaker 01

  And they basically fill these gaps in areas of society that have been abandoned or like marginalized.

• 3:44:25Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:44:26Speaker 01

  And they fulfill a role there. So they start saying, okay, we're gonna provide. Justice. Now it's, you know, it's.

• 3:44:34Danny Jones?

  Justice.

• 3:44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, law of the jungle, you could say. But like, you know, you know, if you're, if you've got a dysfunctional justice system or the, you know, you can't go to the police with this stuff. They're not protecting your community.

• 3:44:48Speaker 01

  Then the organized crime groups will say, well, we're, we will like, um, so in another story about a um. Uh, uh, again with the uh. Using the, the example of R-word.

• 3:45:01Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:45:02Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, so I sort of saying that earlier.

• 3:45:04Danny Jones?

  No, it's all right.

• 3:45:05Speaker 01

  Um, in Jamaica, well, I did some, some study in Jamaica, some reporting in Jamaica as well. We have a different structure, but it's very interesting and they had. And, and, and was talking to, to guys there who, who, who work for the, a big boss called, uh, known as Dardos Coke. And his nickname was the president.

• 3:45:23Danny Jones?

  The Presidente?

• 3:45:25Speaker 01

  Uh, the Prezi.

• 3:45:26Danny Jones?

  The Prezi?

• 3:45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, the president. I mean, it's Jamaica. Yeah. So, so what the really interesting thing in Jamaica. They have, um, you had no president, you have a prime minister, the head of state is, you know, was the, uh, you know, king of England.

• 3:45:39Danny Jones?

  Uh huh. Right, right, right, right.

• 3:45:41Speaker 01

  So he was above the prime minister, the president, his kind of nickname. And uh, one of his, his hitmen or head, he was became head of hitmen, he was describing to me. How one time uh, some guy was accused of, of R-word. And they allowed, that they grabbed the guy and they allowed the guys to go in there. With sticks and the, the, the family members can go and beat the guy.

• 3:46:08Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:46:08Speaker 01

  So it's like, well, we're allowing you, you're not quite as brutal as that one from, from Mexico state. Uh, but, and, and they had things like, um, they had uh people accused of theft. In the neighborhood and they had like, they put them in like chicken coops. And have them there. It's like displaying people accused of, of theft.

• 3:46:31Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 3:46:32Speaker 01

  Uh, but also they have, um. As well as the stick, they have the carrot. So these groups also will put on parties. In Jamaica, uh, Dardos Coke, he would have um, these big concerts. He'd have, he'd, he'd call them at events, events every couple of weeks, he'd call them pasa pasa. Then they have these big Christmas and um, and summer jams. We'd have, he'd have big artists playing, they're big reggae artists. One of the guys who sung a song about him was Bunny Whaler. And I, I quoted the song in, in a book and I asked Bunny Whaler.

• 3:47:15Speaker 01

  If I could quote it, he said, you can, as long as you say very clearly, I don't know the guy, I'm not friends with him. But I'm just saying that a lot of people, you know, the song was like, you know, you know, he, he gives away a lot of things. He's, you know, he's a benefactor.

• 3:47:28Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:47:29Speaker 01

  Uh, and, uh, and you have um, all of these. Uh, you know, things they give away in, in, in Mexico. You have these, these times where they give, where the cartel will give away um, goodie bags.

• 3:47:47Speaker 01

  Now, it can be after a natural disaster.

• 3:47:51Speaker 01

  So during COVID as well, or it can be particularly on uh, Three Kings de los Reyes. Which is the, the traditional day of giving out presents after Christmas in Mexico, where they go to areas and give out presents.

• 3:48:06Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:48:07Speaker 01

  And I went to one uh village, it was during COVID, where they gave out presents. And it was, it was, it was in, in the state of Mexico. Um, which is the state next to Mexico City, it'd be like New Jersey or whatever is to, to uh, to New York or New York State or whatever.

• 3:48:27Danny Jones?

  It's called Mexico State?

• 3:48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mexico State, yeah. So it's a, it's a big state and it was a village. It was, I, I, I saw that it was one of the closest ones to Mexico City. It was all over the country. These cartels were giving out um, goodie bags. Um, but the closest place I could find was close to Mexico City. So I went there and we were, first of all, we were like, I knew it was just the name of the municipality, but I didn't know the name of the, you know, the, the village. So we went there, we're asking and everyone had heard about, and we've been all day, but eventually we found out. The village where it happened and got up there and knocked on some doors and found some people who had received the goodie bags.

• 3:49:04Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:49:05Speaker 01

  And it was these neighbors, a couple of families living next door and they said, they, they sent off the, the young girls, the family, like a thirteen and fourteen year old girl who'd gone there to receive the bags. And they were saying, yeah, it was, it was good stuff. It was sugar and eggs and flour and it was, it was good.

• 3:49:19Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow. No cocaine?

• 3:49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it, and it was good. It's like, you know, it was good makes. It wasn't any cheap makes. It was good. These are good stuff. But by doing this, they were like, uh, saying we're like, we're, you know, benevolent.

• 3:49:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:49:31Speaker 01

  Benefactors, we're giving out to the communities.

• 3:49:35Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 3:49:37Speaker 01

  Uh, and uh, um, in Brazil, I went to one of these parties.

• 3:49:44Speaker 01

  Um, which the, so, so in the, they call them the favelas in Brazil, the, the, the kind of ghetto areas around Rio. And the drug traffickers are called commandos. The biggest one was called Commando Vamelo, the original one, which is a very interesting story about how it was formed. But in the part they had, the, the, the, the, the commander puts on parties, which we went to one of these parties. And we went in there and we didn't have any cameras. Now, there was a Brazilian journalist went to one of these parties with a hidden camera one time. And they caught him.

• 3:50:21Speaker 01

  And they had put him on trial and then they executed him with like swords and stuff.

• 3:50:26Danny Jones?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 3:50:28Speaker 01

  So like they cut it, they cut him. It was a very sad case. So we went, but we went there, no cameras, obviously after that, no cameras, no hidden cameras. We went there and the guys came to us and said, oh, you know, we said, oh, we're from England. I said, I'm from England. I was.

• 3:50:43Speaker 01

  Couldn't take any photographs. We were fine there. And there was just like a kind of party, big speaker stacks and this music, which is favela funk. Kind of music playing. They call it favela funk, which is kind of a weird kind of mix of electro kind of stuff.

• 3:50:58Speaker 01

  It's got actually link, it's got links to Miami going back this music has because go, it says, uh, apparently back to the seventies. Uh, Brazilians, a lot of Brazilians came to Miami and they were buying funk records.

• 3:51:10Speaker 01

  So they went back to Brazil and they play these funk records. And that's what became funk parties. But then they started bringing back more like Miami bass records. Or other styles. And so that the music changed and they had a Brazilian touch. And then, well, we were there, like in, you know, in the party. And then there was a bunch of them with their guns there and they were dancing with their guns and stuff, all the commando guys. And then, uh, we, uh, yeah, we left like six, we basically waited there for the whole night until, until daybreak, left in the morning. And, uh, and when we left, the cops. Uh, were waiting outside the favela and the cops just followed us and then just like searched us.

• 3:51:53Danny Jones?

  Oh, shit.

• 3:51:53Speaker 01

  Very heavily, yeah, for, for drugs particularly, cause like a lot of, a lot of kids, a lot of people will go into these. Um, favelas to buy drugs, that's where they sell all the drugs. And they're very openly selling it. It's openly at tables, they're openly selling cocaine and. So they're, they're, but yeah, but it's an interesting story of that Commando Vamelo, so I interviewed one of the founders there, uh, of the organization.

• 3:52:17Speaker 01

  Um, who, and they, they began going right back to the nineteen seventies. Where in Brazil, you had these guys who are like bank robbers back in those days. Who were in prison, the guys who were like serious criminals, kind of gang, kind of gangsters. Back in those days, it was more like bank, when bank robbery was a big deal.

• 3:52:41Speaker 01

  And they had these political prisoners from a, from a grilla, a grilla group, like left wing grillers. Who are like more like students who joined this grilla group. And the government thought, ah, we're gonna lock up. The grillers, the left wing students, we're gonna lock them up with the bank robbers and that'll, that'll teach them a lesson. You know, they're obviously gonna fuck them over and beat the crap out of them. But the opposite happened. They began organizing together.

• 3:53:08Speaker 01

  So suddenly they started becoming like, the bank robbers are, oh, yeah, yeah, sure, we're political prisoners. But you're just a bank, no, I'm a political prisoner. And they became known as the Commando Vamelo, the red commando, like red, like kind of com. And then eventually there was a, it was a political deal and all the political prisoners were released. But the bank robbers and stuff, just they were still like, oh, you're staying, you're staying in prison. But then they, they start, someone escaped or got let out gradually and they started forming in the, in the areas and became. The Commando Vamelo. So they became like, we're, you know, we're drug traffickers, but we're like, you know, we're, we're revolutionaries.

• 3:53:42Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:53:43Speaker 01

  But like, that's the way they.

• 3:53:44Danny Jones?

  Wow, that's freaking nuts, man. Um, what was that story? I saw that you'd had a story in there about some sort of like secret police investigation into the Lee Harvey Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald going to Mexico City and visiting the, uh, the embassy or something.

• 3:53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:54:00Danny Jones?

  What was that story?

• 3:54:01Speaker 01

  Uh, Lee Harvey Oswald, uh, went to Mexico.

• 3:54:07Danny Jones?

  September, right?

• 3:54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, shortly before, exactly September, shortly before, um, the murder of JFK.

• 3:54:16Speaker 01

  Now, this, there was, uh, a record of this.

• 3:54:23Speaker 01

  Which was sitting, uh, you know, it's, it's sitting, it's been sitting for a long time. From the Mexican secret police files. Which are being held now in a former prison in Mexico called Lacunberi.

• 3:54:40Speaker 01

  And.

• 3:54:44Speaker 01

  I went in there to look, uh, and get some of the documents, which I hadn't seen published before. From the Mexican secret police at the time, the DFS. Uh, back in the nineteen sixties. The DFS was formed in nineteen forty seven. So the same year is the CIA.

• 3:55:07Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 3:55:09Speaker 01

  With, I think with certain inspiration and certain help from the CIA. I don't think it was directly controlled by the CIA. Um, because Mexico is, you know, is an independent country. Um, but they, um, but they do have, had, they had a very close relationship with the CIA.

• 3:55:27Speaker 01

  Now, some of the stuff was, had already come out in some of the CIA files.

• 3:55:36Speaker 01

  Released in, in one of the releases.

• 3:55:38Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:55:38Speaker 01

  On the JFK, the CIA files connected to the, uh, Lee Harvey Oswald trip to, to Mexico City.

• 3:55:46Danny Jones?

  Right. There was some sort of release, there was cables that they were able to track from the.

• 3:55:51Speaker 01

  So basically you had the US, uh, side or, or the certain CIA side, certain documents about this trip to Mexico City.

• 3:55:58Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:55:58Speaker 01

  But I looked more deeply at what the Mexican DFS. Was saying about this and it had, most of the original interviews were, were, well, a lot of original interviews were DFS. Now, the DFS did give some of their suspects. Or i- i- i- in, in the way they described it was lent some of their suspects to unite, to, to US agents. So the, the Mexican DFS would arrest people and then lend them to the United States. And the United States would then look at these people. Now, the story was, it's a very, very strange story, but Lee Harvey Oswald.

• 3:56:41Speaker 01

  Went down to Mexico.

• 3:56:44Speaker 01

  Went to the Cuban Embassy.

• 3:56:51Speaker 01

  And said he wanted a visa to go to Cuba. And then go on from there to the Soviet Union.

• 3:57:03Danny Jones?

  This is what the DFS story says.

• 3:57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, from, from interviews with the people in the Cuban Embassy.

• 3:57:11Speaker 01

  So, so particularly one particular person who worked in the Cuban Embassy, who was the one who attended Lee Harvey Oswald when he came into the Cuban Embassy.

• 3:57:18Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 3:57:21Speaker 01

  Now, she says that afterwards she went to the Soviets.

• 3:57:29Speaker 01

  To ask, oh, does, you know, does he, can we give this guy a visa? And the Soviet said, no. And she turned him down. Then he went in and made a scene and made a big scene in the Cuban Embassy about this.

• 3:57:45Speaker 01

  One of the weird things as well is there'd been a British guy, a British, a British doctor. Who had, who'd met Lee Harvey Oswald on the bus. Going down from the United States to Mexico. And Oswald had even told this British guy on the bus. Yeah, I'm gonna go and get a visa from the Cuban Embassy. To fly to, so, you know, why would you tell some random guy on the bus, that kind of stuff?

• 3:58:10Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 3:58:13Speaker 01

  Now, this other guy came forward.

• 3:58:18Speaker 01

  Um, who was interviewed by the, by the DFS and by the Mexicans, sorry, and by the, by the DFS and Mexico, and by the Americans. Who was, who'd been this kind of weird, um, been a communist from Central America.

• 3:58:37Speaker 01

  And he then flipped, and I think he was Nicaraguan. Who then flipped and said he was reporting about, he was infiltrating communist groups in Mexico. And reporting for the Nicaraguan Embassy, Nicaragua was at that time run by a right wing government.

• 3:58:56Speaker 01

  And he came forward and said he'd been in the Cuban Embassy.

• 3:59:01Speaker 01

  And witnessed.

• 3:59:05Speaker 01

  Some guys, including a mysterious red haired black guy.

• 3:59:13Speaker 01

  Give Lee Harvey Oswald some money, thousands of dollars. And talk about using it for a hit.

• 3:59:24Danny Jones?

  Inside the embassy.

• 3:59:26Speaker 01

  Inside the embassy. And he said he like saw from a patio and saw some of this stuff.

• 3:59:30Danny Jones?

  And again, what you're saying are from documents that you read from the.

• 3:59:35Speaker 01

  DFS interviewed this guy, but also they're, they're both in, there's both DFS versions of the DFS interrogations of this. And there are, um, the US. Actually, both FBI also got involved in this. Now, when the US interviewed this guy.

• 3:59:54Speaker 01

  They concluded this guy was making stuff up.

• 3:59:56Danny Jones?

  The Nicaraguan guy.

• 3:59:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he had the dates wrong.

• 4:00:02Speaker 01

  Uh, and.

• 4:00:06Speaker 01

  A lot of this stuff was, was sat on or stayed in his files. Now, there was also, uh, rumors that came afterwards that the, that the Cuban Embassy woman. Was having an affair with Lee Harvey Oswald.

• 4:00:23Speaker 01

  There was like a rumor that floated around. You know, it came, something kind of appeared a couple of years later, you know, when it came out, she, the way I attended him, somebody, somebody said, oh, they saw. They saw her at a party with him and they were having an affair. They were like, like lovers and stuff.

• 4:00:38Danny Jones?

  In Mexico City?

• 4:00:39Speaker 01

  Mexico City, yeah. Now, um, my conclusions. About this case, I think there's.

• 4:00:51Speaker 01

  There's two possibilities here.

• 4:00:57Speaker 01

  So, well, there's three, there's three possibilities.

• 4:01:02Speaker 01

  So one is, you know, just Lee Harvey Oswald was a bit of a loon. Um, been a bit of a lunatic, bit of a madman, and he's kind of going down there, wanting to go. The Cubans at this point in the service don't want him to go. Somehow the other guy made up the story for whatever reason.

• 4:01:21Danny Jones?

  This made this, this Nicaraguan guy made up the story about the black skinned, red headed guy giving him thousands of dollars to carry out a hit.

• 4:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I made it up. So, so, so one thing is just like, basically that these are crazy things happening. Second idea is this was really part of a, some kind of Cuban plot to pay Lee Harvey Oswald.

• 4:01:47Speaker 01

  And for some reason, they've kind of suppressed this. The third

• 4:01:54Speaker 01

  was this was a deliberate ruse

• 4:02:00Speaker 01

  created by elements of the CIA who were in a conspiracy to take out JFK.

• 4:02:10Speaker 01

  To create this look.

• 4:02:13Danny Jones?

  A diversion.

• 4:02:14Speaker 01

  A diversion to look like the Cubans were involved. So you get Lee Harvey Oswald.

• 4:02:20Speaker 01

  Goes down, you know, announces to some random guy on the bus, I'm going to Cuban Embassy. Goes to the Cuban Embassy, makes a scene at the Cuban Embassy publicly.

• 4:02:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 4:02:32Speaker 01

  And this Nicaraguan guy was somehow like put up

• 4:02:37Speaker 01

  by some, now, if you have different elements within

• 4:02:41Speaker 01

  the CIA, so whatever elements who were behind this, they put up this Nicaraguan guy to go and, you know, go and say this stuff.

• 4:02:47Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:02:48Speaker 01

  But then some other FBI agents interview the guy and say, no, this guy's got it all wrong.

• 4:02:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 4:02:52Speaker 01

  He's making stuff up.

• 4:02:55Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's, that's, that's a possibility. It's interesting part of the puzzle. Uh, you know.

• 4:02:59Danny Jones?

  Very interesting.

• 4:03:00Speaker 01

  I don't know what the, obviously JFK story is a whole big one, but.

• 4:03:04Danny Jones?

  It's a can of worms.

• 4:03:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a crazy can of worms.

• 4:03:07Danny Jones?

  Well, there's also a theory that JFK, or I'm sorry. Been a long day, four hours in. There's also a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was going down to Mexico City to go to Cuba to try to kill Castro.

• 4:03:24Danny Jones?

  There's a whole book about this.

• 4:03:25Speaker 01

  Oh, is there? Okay.

• 4:03:26Danny Jones?

  Yeah, there's a whole book about this, about, uh, what Lee Harvey Oswald was doing in New Orleans with this lady named Mary Sherman.

• 4:03:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:03:32Danny Jones?

  Who was a doctor who worked under, underneath Alton Ochsner, who they were developing like

• 4:03:40Danny Jones?

  essentially like viral, like virus weapons, essentially to kill people. And, and one of the things that they were, they were doing was trying to engineer some sort of a special monkey virus to use it for assassinations. And Lee Harvey Oswald was very closely tied to some of these people in New Orleans who were working on this stuff. I think that's a verified fact. Um, what's not verified is that, did he take one of these things down to Mexico to try to get to Cuba to assassinate Ca- Castro? Just another theory that's, that's been floating around.

• 4:04:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it seems like, it seems like, um, I mean, they look all these different attempts to assassinate Castro. And they had all of these weird harebrained attempts.

• 4:04:24Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 4:04:25Speaker 01

  Uh, I, I think some of the gangsters who were going along with this, you had certain people from the Chicago outfit who were going along with these Operation Mongoose.

• 4:04:34Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 4:04:34Speaker 01

  Stuff. And then you also had, fun enough, the guy who ran MKUltra.

• 4:04:40Danny Jones?

  Gottlieb?

• 4:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:04:41Danny Jones?

  Sidney Gottlieb?

• 4:04:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was also there like involved in these like weird, and they had, they had, they had these, one of the, one of the, the schemes they put forward was we want to give Castro LSD. So that he like, he'll like just talk a bunch of gibberish. And then he'll like, you know, everyone will think he's crazy and he'll lose his power.

• 4:05:00Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 4:05:00Speaker 01

  One was, would you do something to make him lose his beard? So like he, he loses the power of his beard. Always kind of weird harebrained schemes. Uh, but another interesting, uh, guy I talked to on the Castro case

• 4:05:13Speaker 01

  was, uh, the son of, of, of a, a Cuban, uh, guy who was also worked, uh, for the CIA as an operative. Monkey Morales was the name of the guy and was also involved in, in drug trafficking, Miami based. And he has some interesting stories about, so he said, he's, he's, he, this guy's still around, uh, around the place, but, um, Ricardo Morales, uh, Junior. Um, and, and his, um, his father, known as the Monk, Monkey Morales, uh, talked about, he was

• 4:05:49Speaker 01

  called, went, went to New Orleans, so he went to, to Dallas. Um, as part of some team on, on the day of the, uh, JFK assassination, but they were not called into action, but they went there as some kind of backup team or.

• 4:06:05Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 4:06:07Speaker 01

  But, uh, but yeah, in that case, I mean.

• 4:06:09Danny Jones?

  It's a, it's a hornet's nest. There's so many moving parts.

• 4:06:12Speaker 01

  Who knows what happened?

• 4:06:13Danny Jones?

  There's a great documentary I watched a while ago on Netflix. It was a, it's like a documentary series about Cuba. Like the rise and fall of, of Castro's regime and, um, and Che Guevara and all that. And there was an interview with a journalist who was telling a story about how he went into wherever Castro, the building that Castro was in to interview Castro, like on the top floor of some hotel, some big hotel or whatever. He sat down, they were like serving hors d'oeuvres or whatever. And he was sitting down with Castro, taking notes, talking to him. And then somebody walks in and whispers and, or tells Castro, Kennedy has just been shot.

• 4:06:55Danny Jones?

  And this reporter said, as he was sitting there, Castro looked back at the officer that told him this and said, they're going to blame me for this. As if like he knew that they were immediately going to try to make him the fall guy, which is interesting that he said that right in front of that reporter. Cause that's one of the, one of the excuses that people, one of the stupid theories, in my opinion, that they say that why, that why Kennedy died was because of Castro, which I don't know if there's enough evidence to support that, but.

• 4:07:26Speaker 01

  Do you, you think the, the kind of, um, broadly the Oliver Stone, uh, picture that he paints has some truth?

• 4:07:35Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I think generally, I, I think there's a guy named John Newman, who, who I've had on the show before, who's, um, he was actually the, um, like one of the consultants hired by Stone for that first JFK film. And this guy's probably wrote more books on JFK than anyone in the world. Any new, any JFK book um, that comes out, all the research that those people do is they read this guy's books to do the research for their new books. It's one of the interesting things about like history books is people are writing books based off previous history books. You know, it's so rare that people can go back to, to like the original sources of stuff, like the actual files. But this guy, John Newman, has read all of the over a million, um, released JFK files and documents. And he has this

• 4:08:21Danny Jones?

  his, this overarching theory and all these different connecting pieces, but like to sum it up, his view is that it was a military coup.

• 4:08:30Danny Jones?

  Because he wanted to pull everyone out of Vietnam. And, uh, he, he stopped this big nuclear plan that the United States had to nuke the Soviet Union and China in one fell swoop, because that was the moment in time in history that the United States had the most nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union had the least amount of nuclear weapons. And, um, he thinks it was a, a coup by the military and the CIA's involvement was just strictly to cover it up.

• 4:08:57Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 4:09:00Danny Jones?

  But I don't know. There's a million different flavors of the JFK thing. There's a UFO angle to it. There's an Israel angle to it. I mean, the list goes on.

• 4:09:09Speaker 01

  The ultimate, the ultimate thing.

• 4:09:10Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 4:09:10Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, it's interesting. Uh, one of the, um,

• 4:09:16Speaker 01

  how, how, I was looking at different terms of the used conspiracy theory. And before, the, the word itself, the phrase itself dated right back to the 19th century. Uh, I mean, looking at like, uh, New York Times references to the phrase conspiracy theory. But it was very seldom used.

• 4:09:36Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 4:09:38Speaker 01

  Until after the JFK.

• 4:09:40Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 4:09:41Speaker 01

  Thing. And then there's, uh, memos, CIA memos giving CIA, uh, station chiefs and officers instructions of how to combat accusations of the CIA involvement. And then often, you know, they.

• 4:09:58Danny Jones?

  They pushed the whole conspiracy theory term.

• 4:10:01Speaker 01

  Term. So it became, it became a lot bigger afterwards.

• 4:10:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah, there's a great Adam Curtis documentary about that. Right. That's the first time I heard that.

• 4:10:09Speaker 01

  I love that director. Yeah, he's, yeah, brilliant.

• 4:10:12Danny Jones?

  Oh, man, his movies are the best.

• 4:10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great stuff. Yeah.

• 4:10:15Danny Jones?

  Yeah, man.

• 4:10:16Speaker 01

  I love his series, uh, uh, The Century of the Self.

• 4:10:20Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah. That one's good. The hyper normalization one is another, another really good one. He's spot on. The way, the way he does documentaries is so unique, you know, where he takes footage, like historical footage and like narrates it and tells this crazy story, you know? Brilliant.

• 4:10:36Speaker 01

  He did a couple more recently, I, I saw back, over back in the UK, where he had no narration. Just like, he just, just got this footage. I mean, he has access to the best archive, you know, this BBC archive.

• 4:10:48Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 4:10:49Speaker 01

  It is incredible archive, but also he, he has access to all of the, um, I think he looks through all of the kind of, not just the main um, stuff from the interviews, but all of the off takes. He'll go through all of the, in the back catalog, you know, where they, where they, you know, they, they made two hours, filmed two hours of footage for a three minute news piece, and they looked through the two hours of footage. And just find all the kind of funny moments and stuff. Yeah, I think it's a lot of that stuff there. So he did one, um, really interesting one, uh, on like the 19 eighties, um, goes from the kind of late seventies up to the nineties, really focusing on the eighties. And just, just with no, uh, no, no narration, just, just pure like footage, footage, footage. You think it might get boring, but it really works. It's still such a good storyteller.

• 4:11:33Danny Jones?

  Do you remember, do you remember what that one's called?

• 4:11:35Speaker 01

  I, I, I forget the name right now.

• 4:11:36Danny Jones?

  I'll look it up.

• 4:11:37Speaker 01

  Um, is it Can't Get You Out Of My Head or something?

• 4:11:40Danny Jones?

  Oh, yes, Can't Get You Out Of My Head.

• 4:11:41Speaker 01

  Or, or, or the one afterwards. I can't, I can't, I, I forget. There's a couple of the, the.

• 4:11:46Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 4:11:47Speaker 01

  Um, and, um, yeah, yeah, it's really, it's really good. It's very, it's, you know, in Britain, in, in, in the, in the 1980s, and it was very historical and.

• 4:11:54Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 4:11:55Speaker 01

  So it kind of really makes you, you know, think about, oh, wow, that, that time.

• 4:11:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 4:11:58Speaker 01

  Uh, but yeah, yeah, it's amazing storytelling, you know? And just is like, you know, he'll just take something and like make the, uh,

• 4:12:09Speaker 01

  Oh, shifty, that's it, shifty.

• 4:12:11Danny Jones?

  Is that it, shifty?

• 4:12:12Speaker 04

  Shifty and then, and then.

• 4:12:13Danny Jones?

  Living in Britain at the end of the 20th century.

• 4:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I really recommend that. I mean, you know, just, just, uh, it, it, it's amazing how interesting it is to watch, it's just threading a bunch of, and it just tells the story with the footage without any narration. And it's almost like he's, he's so good, he's done a narration for so long.

• 4:12:33Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 4:12:33Speaker 01

  You can almost like hear his voice there, even though he's not saying.

• 4:12:35Danny Jones?

  Yeah, right. It's such a trippy way of making films, man.

• 4:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:12:39Danny Jones?

  Very, very, very powerful stuff.

• 4:12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:12:42Danny Jones?

  Well, Yoan, thank you, man, for doing this. This has been fucking mind bending conversation. So many crazy stories.

• 4:12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:12:50Danny Jones?

  Um, so like, what's next for you? Uh, what are you working on in the future? What can people look forward to?

• 4:12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I've got a new book, uh, which, uh, it's gonna be a very interesting topic, I think, for, for people who like this, this, uh, this show. A lot of, some of those things we talked about, I don't wanna give too much away yet, but it's gonna come out next year.

• 4:13:10Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 4:13:11Speaker 01

  And, uh, and it's a bit different from some of the other books. It's got some, uh, interesting and very kind of US angles and some

• 4:13:17Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 4:13:17Speaker 01

  very kind of interesting, uh, stuff behind the scenes. So I've got a new book that's gonna come out next year. Uh, and I, I'm still at it all the time. I, I get stories out from, from the scene, uh, and, and from the field, and, you know, I get, I write stories every week. Um, and yeah, just keep doing it. And, uh, yeah, there's a lot of other subjects, matters I wanna, I wanna get into as well.

• 4:13:40Danny Jones?

  Awesome, brother. Well, thank you for making the trip. I really enjoyed it. And, uh, we'll link your Substack, your website, anything else that we should link below?

• 4:13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that, that is called Crash, Crash Out Media.

• 4:13:51Danny Jones?

  Crash Out Media.

• 4:13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Crash Out Media, my Substack. That's a fantastic place to check out, yeah.

• 4:13:55Danny Jones?

  Perfect, man. All right. Thanks again, man. Good night, world.

• 4:13:59Speaker 06

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