Furthermore, being in prison gave Escobar protection from his enemies and allowed him to avoid a much-feared extradition to the U.S. He was the kind of guy who just wanted to keep the streets safe. "But we felt that he was still in Medellin or in the immediate area. Nevertheless, Javier Peas role in taking down perhaps the most infamous drug lord in history was nothing short of essential. How much of 'Narcos' Season 2 really happened? [Warning: This story contains spoilers from the second season of Narcos.]. Toft played a key role in Colombia's successful hunt last year for Pablo Escobar, the Medellin cartel chief killed in a rooftop WebThats especially true when he and his partner go to take down Cockroach, only to have one of Escobars hitmen take him out first, killing another DEA agent in the process. ), The information in that document is also corroborated by a number of other sources that spoke directly to Narco News, including former government officials who are familiar with the DEAs Bogot operations. He chose the drug business, he chose his greed and his ego over his family. Cali opened the door and the North Valley kind of kicked it through. Actor Michael Pena, who played Kiki in Narcos, researched the role of Kiki Camarena for Narcos: Mexico in part by speaking with the agents widow. We never crossed that line, but thats what makes the show exciting and interesting, Pea said. Kiki received two Sustained Superior Performance Awards, a Special Achievement Award and, posthumously, the Administrators Award of Honor, the highest award granted by DEA, the DEA says. I believe, based on their representations, that that new evidence alone would put the corrupt agents in prison. A few days before Escobar surrendered, DEA Agent Steve Murphy arrived in Colombia to help with the hunt for the slippery drug lord. Updated at 12:51 p.m. DEA The Florida agents then set up a wiretap and recorded conversations between their own informants and the other DEA informants who were tied to the leaked DEA information. The penultimate episode sees Escobar retreating to his father's farm. "When Connie read that her character was going back to Miami, she got upset," Murphy recalls. Having been failed by so many before and facing tremendous risks to their careers and their safety and the safety of their families, they were understandably hesitant to reveal the information I requested, including the names of those directly involved in criminal activity in Bogot and the United States. Camarena held other positions in law enforcement before joining the DEA. They only travel a short distance, a few feet, but it strikes the body and leaves whats called powder burns. "There was a lot of corruption," says Murphy. "A lot of people didnt know about the Cali cartel. ", As for his portrayal, Feistl called Stahl-David a perfectionist. 2023 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. Newman also said little was known about Victoria "Tata" Escobar (Paulina Gaitan) at the time. THR confirmed that two new DEA agents have been added as series regulars for season three: Michael Stahl-David (Show Me a Hero) as Chris Feistl and New Zealand actor Matt Whelan as his partner, Daniel Van Ness. 33 Ancient History Facts You Definitely Didn't Learn In School, Nurse Reunites With Doctor She Cared For As A Premature Baby In That Same Hospital 28 Years Ago, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch, Actor Pedro Pascal (left), who portrays Javier Pea (right) in the Netflix hit. Now retired, he ended his career in Phoenix working on cases impacting Mexico, Arizona and the southwest border that were aligned or affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel. "We went back and forth for a couple of minutes and I said we were here on the ground in Cali and would like to meet as soon as possible. US reexamines murder of federal agent featured in The group is widely recognized to be involved in narco-trafficking and arms dealing at the highest levels. The bathroom had its own jacuzzi. To this day, no one is sure who fired the fatal shot. The recordings revealed that a narco-trafficker had indeed obtained the internal DEA information that was used to expose the Florida groups informant. He had a living room, a kitchen in one room, and the other consisted of a master bedroom and an office combination. Those American tourists in the restaurant that we see get killed in the show were assumed to be DEA agents by Rafa. Though Feistl says the reaction in Colombia was mixed, the exposure shifted the tides. 2023 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. She is pregnant throughout part of the show and living with him in Mexico with their family while his job increases in danger. Sources told Narco News that the informant is a wealthy Colombian businessman with investments in high-tech firms and ties to narco-trafficking. "If you do that, you deny the human side of these guys, which is what allows them to happen.". Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter. "The MedellinCartel was the Wild Wild West and Cali was businesslike," explains Pena. He talks about how Tata had to personally go negotiate these different surrendering of assets to all the Cali Cartel traffickers. The real Steve Murphy and Javier Pena discuss what is true and what is fiction, and shed insight on Season 3. They are prepared to provide the Public Integrity Section with those names and everything in the files at OPR and OIG, and then some, if called upon to do so. "Javier and I were manning the 1-800 number but people would call in with all kinds of tips because there was a $500 reward on the table," he says. In yet another case outlined in Kents memorandum, the second Florida DEA group was working with an informant in Colombia who claimed to have made contact with a FARC guerilla while in prison. Escobar himself quickly became one of the richest men in the world. The implosion of Guadalajara led to the rise of the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, who is now in U.S. custody. Each murder was preceded by a request for their identity by an agent in Bogot.. He said, 'Yes, thats a possibility,'" he says. When the informant approached the DEA once again with information, writes Kent, the Bogot agent that traveled to Washington, D.C., now claimed that the informant was a pedophile. He was sentenced to five years in his custom-built prison, which was a resort. "This was the kind of story that was always in the shadows., In telling Cali's story, Feistl praised the Narcosteam and Netflix for how they portrayed the godfathers. WebA location manager was shot and killed when scouting locations in the north of Mexico city for this last season 4. At one point, it was estimated that he was worth more than $25 billion. "He said, 'Im not going anywhere. And so for me, its still a little bit about the legacy of duty. But when the informants got to the airport to leave for the U.S., they were arrested. For instance, Agent Murphy wasnt actually in Colombia for most of the events related to the hunt for Escobar that were portrayed in the shows first season. There was no way he was getting out of this one, right?". Ive heard him say before that getting his story out is his way of telling people that if youre confronted with a potentially bad situation, just say 'no.' Below, Feistlanswers some of THR's most burning questions about the stranger-than-fiction, real-life events that played out on the season. Two guys on a motorcycle, thats the way they killed a lot of people.. We sell bronze life-size busts of Kiki that are unveiled in schools and libraries throughout the country, not just in San Diego. The investigation was halted. Kent says his claims are supported by a number of DEA agents in Florida who the agency muzzled and retaliated against after they tried to expose the corruption. Instead, as in similar past cases, they have been buried in the contorted layers of the Justice Department bureaucracy. Lenny Jacobson and Mika Camarena attend the Netflix Original Series Narcos: Mexico, special screening at LA Live in Los Angeles, CA on November 14, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. They were advised that the best tact was for the informants to carry it out themselves.. Among other things, it was alleged that the informant (the narco-trafficker) had several agents on his payroll who provided him with classified information. She told the newspaper, Since retiring as a skin-care consultant, I can spend more time as president of the foundation. Though some mystery remains around the deaths of the latter two (Chepe was believed to have been killed in a police shootout until a memoir detailed otherwise) the show shared its interpretations of the truth in its depictions. The bottom line: Gallardo went way too far by targeting Camarena. A DEA agent in Bogot, it turns out, had told Colombian officials to lock them (the informants) up and throw away the key, according to Kent. Feistl adds, "All of those things contributed to them then contacting me to give them a little bit of background on Cali.". And what of the mainstream-media guardians of our liberty? I think he felt that he was involved in something and was a part of and belonged to something.". They kept us alive when we were out doing operations, Pea said. ", Ultimately, an American DEA agent named Joe Toft went on the record, like Pena does on the show, to expose Cali as a "narco-democracy" in September of 1994. Hes been in custody since 1989, however. We put a lot of pressure on and it was that relentless pressure that we later learned is what really got him killed.". ", Though Narcos is a dramatization, Newman toldTHR the series is 50-50 when it comes to fiction and nonfiction, and that they stick to the true chronology of events. "Salcedo got into something that wasnt quite what he thought and that was more than he bargained for when he was recruited to help in Cali in killing Escobar," says Feistl. ET. Soon, he graduated to stealing cars and sanding down tombstones from the local cemetery to resell them. You have to understand, the search for Escobar was purely revenge. He described this season as being "50 to 60 percent accurate,"but for serialized drama's sake, the timing had to be condensed. Gallardo was sentenced to 37 years in 2017 for the death of Camarena by a Mexican court (as well as the murder of Alfredo Zavala, a Mexican pilot), according to The Times. Narcos has moved on from its original setting of Colombia from the late 70s through to the early 90s and instead will focus on the rise of the cocaine cartels in Mexico from the mid-80s. "She was benefiting from all the illegal things her husband was doing," he says about Tata, who was 15 when she married 24-year-old Pablo. Bienvenidos en Espaol! And he protected his enterprise with terror and murder. They adopted their second daughter in May before they returned. "It took us quite a bit of time to locate Pallomari and assist him in getting out of the country," he says. While Pena was her DEA contact on the show, Feistl said he never had dealings with Christina and has "no idea" about what he involvement was after Franklin's death or her status now. The following is from a 2004 report prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service: Kent contends, in the memorandum, that during the wiretap, the corrupt Bogot DEA agent discusses his involvement in laundering money for the AUC. But despite being caught on tape admitting to helping the most murderous political force in the hemisphere today to launder the money from their extensive drug trafficking operations, the agent faced no punishment. 3 power that is now No. Ambassador Michael I wanted to find out what made the guy tick, and I did a lot of research and thank God I spoke with Mika (Camarenas wife), he told Newsweek. Javier had been there three years before me. But when the Florida agents arrived in Colombia, another Bogot DEA agent told them that the informant was going to stay in prison. "At that point in time, Jorge was barricaded up inside of his house with his wife and family for fear they were going to come looking for him to try to kill them," says Feistl. As a result, the Florida agents decided to have the informants come to the United States with a sample of the acrylic, so they could walk DEAs chemists through the extraction process. "The Cali cartel had that vision that 'sooner or later, this corridor is going to get hot and we might need to shift focus.' La Catedral, as the prison was called, was more like a resort. They were more sophisticated and very different cartels. "We arrested Miguel, but then it was, 'Ok, now we need to focus our attention on Jorge. Similar tales of corruption involving overseas DEA agents have surfaced in the past. As the show explains, the Rodriguez brothers are serving out life sentences in North and South Carolina prisons,Pacho Herrera was murdered in his Palmira prison and Chepe Santacruz Londono (Pepe Rapazote) was killed shortly after escaping his Bogota cell by paramilitary groups. So the North Valley cartel thought, 'Hey, I can avoid extradition. "She knew, just like his mother, what he was doing. The problem is the wall was so thick that we broke two or three drill bits and we ran out of drill bits. ", He continued, "Where Medellin really revolutionized that Caribbean corridor, Cali revolutionized that trafficking through Mexico, which the North Valley cartel jumped on after extradition. There were ten to fifteen car bombs on a daily basis, Pea later said.
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