Narco Wars (2020) s01e02 Episode Script

1
♪
Reporter (over tv):
Shake this square world
and blast off for kicksville.
Nixon: Public enemy
number one is drug abuse.
Nancy: Just say no.
Reagan: Halting the drug
problem in america is like
Carrying water in a sieve.
Bush: Take my word for it,
this scourge will stop.
Reporter 2 (over tv): There's
now an understanding that the
War on drugs was
an abject failure.
Man: You have to
stop and ask yourself;
How did we get here?
Trump: We will build a wall.
Man: We buy grass in mexico,
The most important
thing is your contact.
Reporter (over tv): This is
the real action, the pot party.
The trippers, the grasshoppers,
The hip ones
flying high as a kite.
Turner: You had
a society that,
Since the 60s, had sort of
been gradually moving toward
More of a drug subculture.
Reporter (over tv): In time,
the continued use of marijuana
Causes psychic and
physiological changes.
Shame, arrest, prison.
Turner: So you had an increase
in marijuana use that reached
An apex in 1979 when you had
one in nine high school seniors
Using marijuana
on a daily basis.
you just gonna
break my heart ♪
my fallen angel ♪
Turner: It made the
government realize that
the efforts in mexico
Need to be reinvigorated.
Brown: I initially went
to mexico to work on the
Marijuana cultivation
and trafficking.
The state of
sinaloa was the heart of
Marijuana
cultivation for decades,
If not centuries.
Higher up in the sierra madres
was a climate temperature,
Water and sunlight, made it
ideal for growing marijuana.
♪
Our assignment was to work
with the mexican federal police.
But it was a very frustrating
time for what we were doing.
We saw the continued growth of
organized criminal groups that
Now are called cartels.
It was becoming hotter.
It was a hot environment.
Grillo: Sinaloa to the
mexican drug cartels is like
Sicily is to the italian mafia.
But around that time, you
saw sinaloans relocating their
Operations to mexico's second
biggest city, guadalajara.
A really strategic city, much
closer to the center of power.
This is really
when the guadalajara
cartel came together.
It was a group of mexican
drug traffickers saying,
Okay, let's share our resources.
Esquivel: One of the pioneers
was rafael caro quintero.
He made what now is
called the guadalajara cartel.
Using the roads of
guadalajara to send drugs
To the united states,
especially marijuana.
Brown: He came from a
small village in sinaloa.
A street thug, moved
up pretty quickly.
Smart though, for somebody
with a very limited education.
He saw an opportunity.
Brown: They pretended
to be sophisticated,
And they were
really just thugs.
They ruled by brutality, by
killing people who disagreed.
Standing in the middle of a
200 acre field of marijuana,
Seven-foot stalks,
mature marijuana.
I'm jaime kuykendall.
I was the dea agent from
the time that it was created,
July the 1st, 1973.
The job that I was
given in guadalajara, mexico
Was to gather as much
Intelligence as possible and
Then give that information to
the united states government.
There were three agents
there when I got there.
One of them was
enrique camarena.
Everyone called him kiki.
Kiki was born in mexico,
became a naturalized
united states citizen.
For a dea agent,
he was a family man,
And this is a picture
of kiki and his wife.
Her nickname is mika.
Camarena: Kiki
was very excited.
He couldn't wait to
get a case out there.
Camarena:
Guadalajara was beautiful.
The weather was perfect.
The people were very friendly.
Kiki was very good
at befriending people.
They knew he was mexican.
He would speak their language.
(crowd cheering)
Brown: He was an old-time cop.
He believes in justice on the
street and going out and, and
Working the case.
Kuykendall: He enjoyed
matching wits with the bad guys.
Camarena: Kiki's job was
to locate these traffickers,
Know exactly who they
were and where they hung out.
And so the way he
could get a case is by
finding his informants.
♪
Kuykendall: Well they
stopped at a beer truck
'cause they were
getting kind of thirsty.
And uh, asked him if he'd
noticed anything unusual
In the area, any extra activity.
He said, "well, over in the
distance there, there's a farm."
And he said, "I don't know
what's going on over there,
But they've got a lot of workers
'cause they buy a lot of beer
For me and I can't get in,
every time I get there,
They send somebody out
to pick up some beer."
After he left, they drove
as close as they could.
And it looked like there
was a lot of security.
Still we're not sure, right?
So we need an airplane.
They came down and
flew over the area.
What did he see out
there in the desert?
Big green field.
Nobody expected that.
This time they
fly a little lower.
We were not 100% certain until
we actually arrived and saw it;
Six to eight foot tall marijuana
plants out in the desert.
Literally in the desert.
We successfully helped
the mexicans to seize that,
The field of marijuana.
It was about 200 acres.
Kiki smoked a cigar.
Sort of celebratory gesture
on his part to smoke the cigar.
♪
Man: Caro quintero had
this idea to innovate the way
Marijuana was growing using
an irrigation system that was
Kind of sophisticated.
Kuykendall:
Rafael caro quintero was,
For a while, a
mysterious person.
We learn of this
30 year old multi-millionaire,
Maybe billionaire, who knows?
The guy behind all of
these major marijuana
plantations at the time.
Grillo: With the búfalo ranch,
you see the ambitions of
The guadalajara cartel.
Big ideas, big thinking.
This was this huge,
huge marijuana plantation.
The biggest that the
world had ever seen.
They would go for days
to see the scale of it.
It dwarfed any other
marijuana plantation massively.
More than 5,000 workers.
♪
♪
♪
Reporter (over tv):
Cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno.
Brown: That was one of
the very largest seizures of
Cultivated marijuana on record.
That really hurt their
profit factor big time.
(overlapping chatter)
There was no way possible
for that to be forgotten about.
Reporter (over tv):
Detective sergeant dale lint,
Who was on a
vacation hunting trip,
Checking animal trap
lines near this remote
world war ii air strip,
60 miles south-west
of kingman, arizona,
When he spotted two
suspicious trucks heading away
From the area and
radioed for help.
Esquivel: 1984 confiscation
of that shipment of drugs took
The dea by surprise.
Reporter (over tv): When
he first spotted the trucks,
Lint thought they
might carry marijuana.
Hobby county sheriff's deputies
Worked through
the night, weighing,
Marking and cataloguing what
they now say is the largest
Cocaine seizure ever made
west of the mississippi.
Brown: We had done a
lot of work on uh, marijuana.
Aircraft smuggling operations.
That information was
crucial in identifying who the
Aircraft belonged to and
who the cocaine belonged to.
Esquivel: It was the
first evidence for the
U. S. Government that the
guadalajara cartel started
Doing business
with the colombians.
Grillo: Colombians
were looking for, you know,
How can we take our
drugs to the united states?
And the guadalajara cartel had
all of the trafficking routes
Carved out already.
Man: Mexico was
a bouncing point.
It was smart on the part
of the mexican traffickers.
They had to go away
from something as bulky
As marijuana was,
and go to something
that's more packageable,
More concealable,
much more profit factor.
Grillo: This would
change everything.
The amount of profits
they would get from cocaine
Would be astronomical.
Brown: We had developed quite
a bit of information about
Miguel ángel félix gallardo.
He was a sinaloan.
They developed street
sense beyond any street sense.
They learned that
ruthlessness with no care about
Any consequence can
give you great riches.
Grillo: The guadalajara cartel
were getting very angry and
They were particularly
angry with kiki camarena,
This very young, aggressive
agent that was out there
Gathering information.
Man: Rafael caro quintero
wanted revenge.
Grillo: In the 1980s, as the
guadalajara cartel was growing
Caro quintero was getting
very annoyed by various busts.
He thought that the
dea were cleverer than
they were and thought,
Wow, they're
following us around here,
And then they're busting
our drugs up in arizona.
They must be connected.
So he was getting
very frustrated with the
Dea and their business,
and particularly with
Enrique "kiki" camarena.
Heath: I advised our
people that you've got to be
Very careful, be very safe.
Don't take any chances
'cause we're dealing here
With a very strong group.
Camarena: Kiki
had been very busy.
Their work is many
times during the night.
I did not wake up
until 6:00 in the morning.
There was no sign of him.
I was very scared.
Very, very frightened but
I had to hide that because
I needed to get the
boys off to school.
Heath: She calls
the office, you know,
"are y'all working
on an investigation or
whatever that took all night?"
And all that, and
sometimes there is.
And they said, "no."
Kuykendall: As soon as I
learned that kiki was missing,
I feared the worst.
♪
Brown: We knew we
had an agent missing.
We knew we had to do
everything we possibly could
Now because time was so
critical to find him and bring
Him back safely.
Man: There was no other suspects
except the drug traffickers.
Brown: We go balls to the wall.
With no quarter, we don't stop.
Reporter (over tv): Camarena
was last seen leaving the
Us consulate at around 2:30,
Thursday afternoon.
Witnesses say suddenly
four armed men grabbed him,
Pushed him into the back
of a car and sped away.
Reporter 2 (over tv): The same
day a mexican pilot disappeared,
Known to have aided the
drug enforcement administration.
(radio chatter)
(wailing sirens)
Brown: They had their ak47s.
The mex feds had
their automatic rifles.
And the dea agents, we had
little 38 caliber revolvers.
Brown: Watching
what was going on,
Rafael caro quintero stood,
hands on his hips.
I will never forget him.
Black mustache,
black curly hair,
Dressed impeccably.
Dress shirt,
starched beautifully,
Unbuttoned almost all
the way down to his belly.
Necklaces, gold medallions.
Sleeves rolled up a slight
bit because he had a very
Wide gold diamond
encrusted bracelet on it.
Just a sneer on his face.
Commandante pavon of the
federal police went up and
Spoke with this man.
Quintero seemed to
hand him something.
Pavon told us relax,
he's on a special mission.
Very high-level security
mission and we are not to
Impede his travel.
What the hell are
you talking about?
This guy is not a
federal comandante.
Brown: And as the plane slowly
began moving away from us,
I see rafael caro quintero
hold up a bottle of champagne
And yell to us in
spanish, "boys, next
time bring bigger toys."
Reporter (over tv): In mexico,
the suspect in the kidnapping
Of a us drug agent
has disappeared,
And american officials are
charging that mexican police
Helped in the getaway.
Reporter 2 (over tv): These
are some of the men assigned to
The kidnapping case
here in guadalajara.
Elite mexican federal police.
American authorities
say the mexican police,
Apparently on
orders from mexico city,
Have taken what amounts
to a three-week siesta.
Brown: We couldn't go forward.
We had no
law enforcement authority.
We couldn't go searching places.
We couldn't ask for
assistance of citizens,
We couldn't do anything without
the mexican federal police
Because we were
guests in their country.
Reporter (over tv): Tonight,
american authorities say they
Will work on the
marijuana fields here,
The drug traffickers,
the corrupt police later.
All they want now
is their agent back.
♪
(speaking in native language).
Reporter (over tv): They were
found with their arms bound
Behind their backs, blindfolded.
They had been dead at least
15 days and had been buried
For part of that time.
Reporter 2 (over tv):
The commander of the
Mexican police task force
investigating the
Disappearance of
camarena arrived.
The us drug enforcement
administration's top man in
Mexico was also there.
He looked shaken as he left.
Heath: I was the only one that
was approved to sit in from
The dea at the autopsy.
Well he was tortured,
And obviously hurt very badly,
And on and on and
on until he died, so.
Camarena: It was like, it was
like a, I was feeling his pain.
It's like I wanted to feel that
pain to, to be able to forgive.
Esquivel: The guy in charge
of that interrogation was
Rafael caro quintero,
and he was a natural killer.
He was so upset with the
dea and kiki camarena because
Months before that they
discover a big plantation in
The rancho el búfalo.
(gunshots)
Brown: Kiki was a tough guy.
He was a marine.
He put up with
all kinds of stuff,
Fighting for the
united states.
And to have him suffer that
torture at the hands of these
Traffickers was outrageous.
Kuykendall: Kiki's body
was flown to san diego in a
Air force cargo plane.
That was kiki's
last flight home,
That was going back to
his adopted country,
The united states of america.
I was in the aircraft,
And it was a somber time,
Somber flight.
Brown: From that moment, we had
a great resolve in this country
To find those who
were responsible and
bring them to justice.
♪
Reporter (over tv):
Rafael caro quintero is being
Held in a prison
on the outskirts of
mexico city tonight.
He was captured in costa rica
earlier this week and returned
To mexico amid heavy
security last night.
Reporter 2 (over tv): American
officials say he is living in
A country club atmosphere
with his own servants,
Liquor and private phone lines.
Reporter 3 (over tv):
A police comandante,
Armando pavón reyes, was
sentenced to prison this week
For taking a huge bribe
to help caro quintero
flee after the killing.
Reporter 4 (over tv):
Félix gallardo, reputedly
Mexico's biggest
cocaine trafficker,
Is also wanted for
the camarena killing
But is still at large.
(crowd cheering)
Grillo: As a teenager, he went
to college and was studying
Business and he joined the
police where he was assigned
To be a bodyguard for public
officials and started making
Strong connections in
mexican political circles.
Esquivel: Miguel
angel felix gallardo,
A figure that had charisma.
He was like a
businessman in a suit.
A narco trafficker in a suit.
He knows how to
talk to politicians
and corrupt officials.
♪
Grillo: When the mexicans
got into cocaine in a big way,
This would turn the mexican drug
traffickers from what had been,
You know, at one point
marijuana smugglers into these
People running multi-billion
dollar businesses and who
Would use that money to
build armies that would
Drown mexico in blood.
Reporter (over tv): At least
40% of the cocaine smuggled
Into the states is
from the tijuana cartel.
Man: To control that city, you
have to kill a lot of people.
Captioned by cotter
captioning services.