DEA agents seen as untouchable among drug cartels The penultimate episode sees Escobar retreating to his father's farm. Narcoscontinues to walk the fine line between presenting its villains as characters who are addictive to watch, but who are not glorified. But the OPR mysteriously ordered the polygrapher not to report on the test: He was instructed (to say) that the test never took place.. There were no stipulations that he had to turn over any of his assets: He could have walked away a free man and never have had to work again. I still have a job to do.'" "After Escobar is killed, maybe two or three years later, we find out the real truth that one of our officers at the Search Bloc was hand-in-hand with Los Pepes. "Each one of them brought something to the table, which was pretty distinctive," he says. Getty ImagesActors Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook (top) who portray agents Pea and Murphy, respectively. Ironically, the NDDS chief to whom Kent addressed the memorandum, Jodi L. Avergun, is now the chief of staff for DEA. Sources told Narco News that the informant is a wealthy Colombian businessman with investments in high-tech firms and ties to narco-trafficking. And while the show makes Pea and Murphy out to be the heroes of the story, Pea insists that it was the Colombian police who deserve the real credit. 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. WebAllegation Two:Bogot DEA Agents Imprison and Possibly Conspire to Murder Informants to Prevent Their Travel to U.S. A separate DEA group, also based in Florida, ran into "We told them how it actually happened," says Pena. I think he retired from the Colombian National Police and did some work with the Cali Cartel until they were taken down, and I think he eventually went to prison. Toft played a key role in Colombia's successful hunt last year for Pablo Escobar, the Medellin cartel chief killed in a rooftop He talks about how So how closely does the Netflix version of Javier Pea match up to the real one? ", 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. The memo further claims that, rather than being simply a few bad apples who need to be reported to their superiors, these allegedly dirty agents are being protected by an ongoing cover-up orchestrated by watchdog agencies within the Justice Department. Furthermore, being in prison gave Escobar protection from his enemies and allowed him to avoid a much-feared extradition to the U.S. Web"Descenso" is the first episode of Season 1 of Narcos and the first episode overall. They had hundreds of people working at Hacienda Napoles. The acrylic was then shipped to the United States and Europe where, during processing, the cocaine was extracted from the acrylic.. There is much more to that phone conversation as to where and how we meet. Fesitl was part of the extradition team and was present when Gilberto and Miguel were sent to the U.S. in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and that was his last interaction with the pair. He says they had to give up everything. Why Narcos became such addictive viewing Then, learn about the bloody campaign that Escobar and Los Extraditables waged against Colombias extradition treaty with the United States. Javier Pena Eventually, the pressure on Escobar from authorities grew so great that he actually decided to surrender, but on a condition: He should get to build his own prison. Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter. According to El Pais, Camarenas skull, jaw, nose and cheekbones were crushed with a tire iron. 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. "We tend to say he was a Robin Hood guy because he took some of his ill-gotten gain and helped the poor, but thats all fantasy," he says. how to know past life through astrology; does nomberry sell authentic items And he protected his enterprise with terror and murder. WebA Drug Enforcement Administration agent was killed in an apparent robbery attempt in Colombia, the agency announced Friday. When a gun is held close to any part of your body and a bullet is fired, little pieces of gun powder come out. Pablo Escobar died in a rooftop shootout in Medellin on Dec. 2, 1993. Feistl explains that they were looking for one of the few insiders who had precise intelligence about the Cali godfathers and their whereabouts, and Salcedo saw the writing on the wall and was looking to get his family to safety. 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. That's not a dedicated family man. Kiki Camarena is the DEA agent who pays the ultimate price for trying to hunt Gallardo down. He was shot three times: in the leg, torso and fatally in his ear. Wikimedia Commons1977 mugshot of Pablo Escobar. ", Murphy (played by Boyd Holbrook) and Pena (played by Pedro Pascal) are the two agents responsible for taking down Pablo Escobar. (Kent wrote his memo in late 2004 only after he became aware of the alleged corruption and then had exhausted other internal channels within DOJ for addressing the problems.). Kent is no longer with the Washington, D.C.-based wiretap unit of NDDS. He is telling the story of his father,DEA agent Enrique Camarena and story of #RedRibbonWeek #inspiringyoungminds Thanks for your fathers and your service to our communities .#msasdonaroll pic.twitter.com/2rAEDOOVgM, Principal Serce (@mr_serce) October 23, 2018, He told NBC San Diego of his dad, You know, I think about him every day. On the show, the character is shot by Salcedo as the DEA agents are approaching Pallomari(Javier Camara) to transport him to the U.S. Oftentimes, the people Pea worked with funneled information directly to Escobar. In addition, Kents request to send the Bogot corruption allegations to the Justice Departments Public Integrity Section was denied, and his memorandum deep-sixed until now. 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. So the North Valley cartel thought, 'Hey, I can avoid extradition. FB.init("6fd1eea8d35df9c4bb8ba0035ab521a9"); Sign up for free email alerts list: "It was revenge for a person that killed thousands and thousands of innocent civilians and police officers, including a couple of my good friends.". The writers just really astound me. Warning: Because the real story so closely tracks the fictional one, this article will contain spoilers for Narcos: Mexico. In March 1985, the DEA recovered the body of Kiki Camarena, 37, who left behind Mika and three children named Enrique, Daniel, and Erik. She lived like a queen.". "One of the main things, going back to Pablo, was that a lot of that cocaine traffic was going up that Caribbean corridor into Florida," explains 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. Over the next few years, Pea and the Colombian police played a cat-and-mouse game with Escobar, tapping his phones and trying to turn his criminal associates against him. But the DEA had nothing to do with killing Yusti. Escobar shot at the police, they returned fire, and Escobar was killed. Kiki is also shown confronting Felix in the streets for no good reason. At one point, it was estimated that he was worth more than $25 billion. WebA location manager was shot and killed when scouting locations in the north of Mexico city for this last season 4. The book alleges that DEA officers investigating Camarenas death knew that the drug agents murder was a joint operation between the drug cartel and the DFS, an agency with intimate ties to the CIA., Kuykendall said, The CIA didnt give a damn about anything but Cuba and the Soiets. NARCOS: MEXICO Official Trailer "Agent Kiki Camarena" (HD) Michael Pena Series, SUBSCRIBE for more TV Trailers HERE: goo.gl/TL21HZ He gave his life for his work. Did he really move to Guadalajara, Mexico and work for the DEA? I had a limited time frame in which to speak with them and ask questions. Steve Murphy/Texas MonthlyJavier Pea and Steve Murphy sit outside of La Catedral following Pablo Escobars escape. He did so by making a videotape of a conversation he then had with a member of the FARC in jail in which they discussed their desire for him to provide them with communications equipment. ), 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. But by the 1970s, he had discovered that the real money was in cocaine. WebIn March 1985, the DEA recovered the body of Kiki Camarena, 37, who left behind Mika and three children named Enrique, Daniel, and Erik. The DEA agents in Florida looked further into the source of that information and followed the trail to several other DEA informants. Kiki was surrounded by five armed men who threw him into a car and sped away. The first season spanned more than a decade as it detailed the rise of Escobar, but the second focused on the 18 months between his escape from La Catedral prison and his eventual death. ", What the third season zeroed in on, however, was the DEA's dealings with Salcedo and in fact, the Cali insider was only playing for both teams for a short amount of time. But that was probably the most interesting thing of that book. Instead, as in similar past cases, they have been buried in the contorted layers of the Justice Department bureaucracy. Now those people all of a sudden became 100 percent loyal to Pablo, willing to give their lives to protect him and work for him. ET. Camarena held other positions in law enforcement before joining the DEA. "A lot of people didnt know about the Cali cartel. And he protected his enterprise with terror and murder. Escobar's son, Juan Pablo, details the days after his father's death in his book, Pablo Escobar: My Father. He claims that the nail in that coffin was driven in by OPR after it discovered that an OIG agent was investigating the Bogot corruption and related money laundering operation, In June 2004, OPR and DEA, the two agencies embarrassed by the prior allegations (involving the Bogot agents) and likely to come under tremendous scrutiny for their own actions in response, demanded that my case agent turn all of the (investigation) information over to OPR, Kent states in the memorandum. I think he felt that he was involved in something and was a part of and belonged to something.". 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. "He said, 'Im not going anywhere. In real life, his name was Cesar Yusti. "Both those guys said I would be a good resource to speak to, and also because of William Rempels book At the Devil's Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down Cali." He came back in 1999, where he overlapped with Pena, and until 2002 they were working against the North Valley cartel. 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. During the 1980s, Pena and Murphy were sent to collaborate with the Colombian Search Bloc in its war against drug traffickers such as Pablo Escobar, often contacting the CIA and Colombian police to help in their operations. "She actually talked to Eric [Newman] about it and said: 'Ive just got one bone to pick with you, I would have never left my husband there!' Judy Moncada (Cristina Umana) was a major player in the alliance of enemies who formed to take down Escobar, until her own partners took her out.