Narco Wars

Ospina: How we doing?

Thanks for visiting the city of medellín, man.

It's really a pleasure for us to have tourists like you guys

Here right now.

Where are you from?

Man: Slovenia. Ospina: Slovenia.

Oh, far away, you came so far, man.

Thank you.

In medellín, we pay a high price because of the cocaine business.

We pay the price in blood and tears.

We were the murder capital of the world back in 1991.

There was an average of 30 murders a day in medellín.

Hundreds of bombs and explosions.

Pablo escobar was one of the biggest

Drug dealers in medellín.

His net worth was close to $30 billion us.

And pablo escobar became like a robin hood, man.

He used to go to the poor neighborhoods,

Giving people money, but at the same time,

He's the gun.

He's the motorcycle.

Do this job, do this for me.

So we tour guides are trying to show everything with a

Little respect because there's a lot of scars on

The people of medellín.

Okay, guys.

Here we are at the cemetery where pablo escobar is buried.

Don't expect like, a big monument.

Drug business is a short career, man.

I can count on my hand the people that were drug dealers and like,

"oh, I retired from being a drug dealer and now I live a happy life."

Nah, man.

The outcome of this career is jail, sorrow or death.

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.

Cook: Well, I was home, sleep comfortably in my bed,

And I got a call from an investigator.

It was probably somewhere between 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

And he said, "listen."

He says, "I need help. There's been a fire.

There's an explosion. I have no idea what it is.

I think it may be a bomb factory.

I need someone from major crimes."

I said, "I'll call bob sears."

Sears: I had never of minden, new york, so I said,

"hey, kenny, can't this wait 'til tomorrow morning?"

He says, "no, I think we should go."

Cook: When we got there, it was chaos.

Sears: We'd got the firemen out, we'd got the troopers out.

We'd got the deputies out.

We had to stabilize the scene.

Cook: By sun-up, we had all the bosses there.

We had news media.

It was, you know, huge.

We started checking the various buildings.

Sears: And we started opening these 55-gallon drums and we

Started smelling, "what do we have?"

Cook: We called the lab chemist.

He said, "get outta there immediately."

He said, "if you open the wrong container,"

He said, "some of the stuff will kill you.

You've got what appears to be a cocaine lab."

Reporter (over tv): It turned out to be the largest cocaine

Processing laboratory in the country,

But nobody knew until the trailer on the farm in minden

Blew apart in a fire last Thursday night.

Did you see anything suspicious going on?

Woman (over tv): None whatsoever.

Sears: We always associated cocaine laboratories

With south america.

This was an anomaly.

Cook: In the ten days that they were operational,

They had processed approximately 1,600 pounds of cocaine

For transport to new york city.

Sears: We, we were angry.

How could you do this in upstate new york?

The cali cartel had not only penetrated new york city,

But also penetrated upstate new york big time.

They sent their soldiers up to minden, new york

To do their dirty work.

Reporter (over tv): They're called 'coca dollars' or 'narco bucks'

Cash accumulated by the cocaine cartel,

Billions of dollars earned faster than they can be spent.

Reporter (over tv): Ruling a global corporate empire,

Controlling every phase of the cocaine business,

Brothers gilberto and miguel rodríguez are forcing

Are modern business methods on a violent trade.

Shedd: The cali cartel, they were very smart,

Strategic thinkers.

They had cells who dealt with money and cells who only dealt

With the trafficking and the members of each cell

Didn't know each other.

They had quite an operation.

For example; they bought a company that specialized in

Cement posts for farms, and these cement poles

Were probably six feet tall.

And then they applied the packaging of the one kilo or

One pound to fit the inside of the cement post.

Barger (over tv): The drug bosses based here in cali like

To think of themselves as corporate leaders

Rather than common criminals.

Shedd: If these guys were to do something legal,

They could be the ceos of general motors.

Producer: You learn english in colombia or

In the united states or?

Marroquín: Watching tv, man. Producer: Watching tv?

Marroquín: Watching tv, hiding all the time.

My name is sebastián marroquín, formerly called pablo escobar.

I am the son of pablo escobar.

I grew up living a life full of money, full of power.

My, my father, at the time, he was perhaps one of

The richest men in colombia.

I realized very early that he was a bandit,

Because he told me when I was seven years old.

So, you can imagine being a child.

Perhaps you know the meaning of the word 'bandit,' but you

Don't realize how huge the organization was that

My father was in charge of.

Reporter (over tv): Pablo escobar has been identified by

American authorities as colombia's leading exporter of cocaine.

The escobar family has reportedly amassed

Nearly $2 billion, smuggling 1,100 pounds of refined cocaine

Into the united states every month.

Marroquín: We were living in a life that

We felt power was endless.

Shedd: The medellín cartel was very rough, very vindictive.

The cali people, they looked at it more as a business to expand.

Marroquín: The cali cartel took control of all the

Medellín cartel routes in new york,

And that make my father very upset.

Marroquín: The mónaco building was our, our family home.

We used to live there but I started to be so aware of the

Consequences of my father's actions because I was forced

To hide more than he.

He was more free than I was in that time.

Marroquín: And my father became even more crazy than

Ever because he felt for one hour that all

Of his family were dead.

Marroquín: I kept saying to him,

"look, dad, you should stop," you know.

But he was full of excuses for violence.

Toft: Galán's campaign was to get rid of

Trafficking in colombia.

He was vocal.

He was very aggressive about it.

He promised the colombian people that he

Would do away with the cartels.

Galán was gonna be the savior of colombia.

My name's joe toft.

I was the dea agent in charge of the bogotá office in

Colombia from 1988 to the end of September 1994.

But when I got there, it was actually almost like

Walking into a war zone.

There were bombs going off all over the place,

Assassinations of politicians, of judges.

Escobar had no fear of colombian justice.

The only thing he feared was the

U. S. Government and dea.

Toft: There was no question that he was gonna win the election.

Galán was going to be the next president of colombia,

And escobar knew it.

Toft: Yeah, it was chaos.

He was dragged from the platform into a car and taken,

And later found out that he had died in the hospital.

Toft: He was killed just like everyone that got in escobar's

Way was killed, and the message was very clear.

"you mess with me, you die."

Reporter (over tv): More than 100 people have been killed in

A plane crash near the colombian capital, bogotá.

The plane, an avianca airlines boeing 727

Was on a domestic flight to cali.

Witnesses say the plane was blown apart by two explosions.

Toft: You know, blowing an aircraft out

Of the sky is um, it's inconceivable.

Toft: Americans died on that aircraft.

President bush took this incident to clearly state to

The world that escobar was a direct

Threat to the united states.

Bush (over tv): This, this is crack cocaine seized a

Few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a

Park just across the street from the white house.

It's as innocent-looking as candy but it's turning our

Cities into battle zones and it's murdering our children.

Reporter (over tv): So far this year,

75 gang members and their victims have died in

The wave of violence.

The police battering ram smashing into fortified houses

Where cocaine is cooked into the lethal crack form.

It is narcotics that is driving this engine of destruction.

Reporter 2 (over tv): The epidemic of crack is

Now out of control.

Man (over tv): Crack is here to stay, like they say.