America's War on Drugs

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Narrator: Now America's War on Drugs enters its third decade.

Stratton: He was owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by drug dealers.

Gates: Do you know who is supporting the enemy?

The casual drug user.

Parenti: The militarization begins in Los Angeles.

Woman: Jury deliberations continued today

in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers.

De la Cruz: Daryl Gates created this approach,

and that's what started the riot.

Grim: Mother's little helper, the little pill that was meant

to make the lives of American housewives tolerable.

-Does it look good? -Yeah.

Arnold: We'd been partying like a week straight,

Got FBI. I got DEA.

I said, "Where's AC/DC at?"

Grim: When Kurt Cobain dies,

Bill Clinton even calls it a culture of death.

I experimented with marijuana a time or two,

and I didn't like it.

St. Pierre: The perfect answer became, "I didn't inhale."

De la Cruz: Drugs is big money, and NAFTA was big money.

Parenti: It's not only that more people are going to prison,

but it's that people are staying for longer.

President Clinton: Our great challenge is to take our streets back.

Let us stick with the strategy that's working

and keep the crime rate coming down.

I was in prison when the Berlin Wall fell,

and I remember watching TV every day.

The Cold War was ending,

and there was tremendous pressure on Bush

to try to do something about the drug menace.

Narrator: It's been 18 years since the War on Drugs was declared.

Newly elected president George H.W. Bush

has been in office seven months

when he addresses the nation live on TV.

This is crack cocaine.

It's as innocent-looking as candy.

But it's turning our cities into battle zones.

Narrator: Bush has ordered the invasion of Panama.

It's the first war of the War on Drugs.

Wright: When the U.S. invaded Panama under George Bush's direction,

it was unprecedented, because, for the first time,

the United States military was being called upon

to invade a country to topple one man.

Narrator: Outside the presidential estate

is Panama's leader...

Narrator: ...Manuel Noriega.

He has turned his country

into a center of the international drug trade.

Farah: Panama was this meeting ground.

If you pay the right price

to the right person,

pretty much anything can happen.

Narrator: Noriega owes much of his wealth to doing business

with some of the biggest drug lords in the world,

including Pablo Escobar.

Stratton: He was completely corrupt.

Owned lock, stock, and barrel by drug dealers.

When you got the top guy in your pocket,

the country is yours.

Parenti: The U.S. had been intervening

in Central America for decades.

But what was perhaps new and different

about the Panama Invasion

was the -- the role of drugs

in its justification.

Narrator: American troops quickly subdue Noriega's army.

But when they kick in the door of his lavish home,

they're surprised by what they find.

A lot of red women's underwear,

cocaine, machetes for Satanic rituals.

The U.S. intelligence community had had some inkling

he'd become more sort of in his own, little, weird world.

I don't know if they realized

how far off the rails he had gone.

Narrator: President Bush offers a million-dollar reward

for Noriega's capture,

and 24,000 troops fan out across the country

in the largest manhunt in American history.

His picture will be in every post office in town.

That's the way it works.

He's a fugitive drug dealer.

The interesting thing about Noriega's relationship

with the U.S. was,

not only was he involved and in bed

with these big Colombian drug dealers,

he was also a CIA asset,

so he had his relationship with the Bush administration.

Narrator: Noriega's ties to the CIA

go back to the early days of the Cold War.

As a young officer, he provides information

on Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.

In the '80s, Noriega is enlisted

in Reagan's fight against Communism.

Noriega offers to help the CIA

fight its covert Contra war in Nicaragua,

which had become entangled with cocaine trafficking.

But there's a-a piece to the story

that -- that's -- that's missing.

Panama was created to be kind of like

the Switzerland of Latin America.

In the 1980s, the CIA

was using these banks to launder money

to pay for secret activities in Central America.

And when General Noriega became the head of Panama,

he became the trustee

of this secret CIA banking system.

But he started inviting Pablo Escobar

and other narco traffickers

to do their banking in Panama.

Man: Good morning, Panama.

Narrator: With American troops closing in,

Noriega flees to the Vatican's embassy,

where he's given sanctuary.

But the U.S. Army surrounds the embassy

and begins blasting rock music 24 hours a day

to drive him out.

Soldiers phone in requests

for songs like "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath

and Van Halen's "Panama."

Undeterred, Noriega takes to the radio

to rally his supporters to battle.

Narrator: But Noriega is surrounded by the world's most powerful army

and a mob that wants his head.

When he finally gives up 10 days later, it's agents from the DEA

that cuff him and charge him as a drug trafficker.

Wright: George Bush had to take out our ally

because he violated the sacred trust

of being the leader of Panama.

The U.S. had to go in

and break open those narco trafficker piggy banks,

get the money out,

and give the DEA a road map

to go after these cartels in the early '90s.

Narrator: As one boss is brought down in Panama,

next door, another is about to rise.

Wright: Cocaine is often still being processed in Colombia,

but it wasn't being shipped as frequently

through the traditional routes of Florida.

Things were changing.

Pablo Escobar was on the run.

Others had been eliminated.

One thing that's true about the War on Drugs

is that every time you eliminate one leader,

somebody else gets a promotion.

It's a law of physics almost.

This is what began to happen in Mexico.

Narrator: On this plane is a powerful

yet little-known Mexican drug trafficker

who's come to Cali, Colombia, to make a deal

that will change the War on Drugs.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes, born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa,

where locals worship a drug-trafficking saint,

and his favorite uncle is a legendary smuggler.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes was a-a really strong,

strong thinker and functioned more as a C.E.O.

than he ever did as a drug trafficker.

He determined that he could advance his objectives

by dealing directly with the Colombians.

Narrator: Carrillo is here to make a deal with representatives

of one of Colombia's most powerful cartels,

the Cali Cartel,

controlled by two brothers,

Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela.

Man: We can do more here.

For a decade, the brothers have had a gentleman's agreement

with Pablo Escobar's more powerful Medellín Cartel

to divide up cocaine distribution

in the United States.

But when Escobar gains control over 70% of the market,

he becomes public enemy number one in Colombia,

and the Cali Cartel sees the opportunity to expand.

The Cali Cartel wants to move

more cocaine into the United States.

And the Mexican has a plan.

Amado determined that the Colombians

were always receiving the lion's share,

so he thought he'd be a little bit more sinister.

He said to them,

"For every kilogram that I transship for you,

you pay me in product. You give me one half-kilogram."

So the Colombians thought to themselves, "Hey, no money.

We'll just synthesize more."

But then he started to deluge west-of-the-Mississippi markets

with his own product, gnawing at their market share.

He started flying literally commercial-airline loads

of cocaine into Mexico.

He had his own fleet.

That's when Amado Carrillo Fuentes

became known as Lord of the Skies.

The Mexicans started to dominate

the cocaine market in North America.

Absolute brilliance.

Narrator: With General Noriega behind bars

and Pablo Escobar under increasing pressure,

the Cali and Mexican Cartels are free to take over

and flood the United States with cheap cocaine.

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In the early '90s,