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America's War on Drugs rages on. The Clinton Administration's support of NAFTA inadvertently opens the door to Mexican cartels, and its response to a wave of violence leads to mass incarceration. A celebrity's sister becomes a successful meth lord in the Midwest, as a powerful group of cartels begin a bloody war for dominance. America's streets are flooded with drugs with no end of the war on drugs in sight.
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00:00:00Now, America's war on drugs enters its third decade.
00:00:12He was owned, locked, stock, and barrel by drug dealers.
00:00:16And you know who's supporting the enemy?
00:00:18The casual drug user.
00:00:21Emiltarization begins in Los Angeles.
00:00:23Jury deliberations continue today in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers.
00:00:27Darryl Gates created this approach, and that's what started the riot.
00:00:33Mother's little helper, the little pill that was meant to make the lives of American housewives tolerable.
00:00:40We've been partying like a week straight at FBI.
00:00:43I got DEA.
00:00:44I said, where's ACDC at?
00:00:47When Kurt Cobain dies, Bill Clinton even calls it a cultural death.
00:00:50I experimented with marijuana at a time or two, and I didn't like it.
00:00:53The perfect answer became, I didn't inhale.
00:00:56Drugs is big money, and NAFTA was big money.
00:01:00El futuro es la frontera.
00:01:02It's not only that more people are going to prison, but it's that people are staying for longer.
00:01:07Our great challenge is to take our streets back.
00:01:10Let us stick with a strategy that's working and keep the crime rate coming down.
00:01:14I was in prison when the Berlin Wall fell, and I remember watching TV every day.
00:01:35The Cold War was ending, and there was tremendous pressure on Bush to try to do something about the drug menace.
00:01:45It's been 18 years since the war on drugs was declared.
00:01:49Newly elected president George H.W. Bush has been in office seven months when he addresses the nation live on TV.
00:01:56This is crack cocaine.
00:02:01It's as innocent-looking as candy, but it's turning our cities into battle zones.
00:02:06Bush has ordered the invasion of Panama.
00:02:27It's the first war of the war on drugs.
00:02:30When 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.
00:02:56Outside the presidential estate is Panama's leader.
00:02:59Manuel Noriega.
00:03:01He has turned his country into a center of the international drug trade.
00:03:07Panama was this meeting ground.
00:03:08If you pay the right price to the right person, pretty much anything can happen.
00:03:13Noriega owes much of his wealth to doing business with some of the biggest drug lords in the world, including Pablo Escobar.
00:03:20He was completely corrupt, owned, locked, stock, and barrel by drug dealers.
00:03:27I mean, when you've got the top guy in your pocket, the country is yours.
00:03:34Go ahead, point him on a dad.
00:03:37The U.S. had been intervening in Central America for decades.
00:03:43But what was perhaps new and different about the Panama invasion was the role of drugs in its justification.
00:03:59American troops quickly subdue Noriega's army.
00:04:02But when they kick in the door of his lavish home, they're surprised by what they find.
00:04:05A lot of red women's underwear, cocaine, machetes for satanic rituals.
00:04:17The U.S. intelligence community had had some inkling he'd become more sort of in his own little weird world.
00:04:23I don't know if they realized how far off the rails he had gone.
00:04:28President Bush offers a million dollar reward for Noriega's capture.
00:04:33And 26,000 troops fan out across the country in the largest manhunt in American history.
00:04:39This picture will be in every post office in town.
00:04:42That's the way it works.
00:04:43He's a fugitive drug dealer.
00:04:46The interesting thing about Noriega's relationship with the U.S.
00:04:52was not only was he involved and in bed with these big Colombian drug dealers,
00:04:58he was also a CIA asset.
00:05:00So he had his relationship with the Bush administration.
00:05:05Noriega's ties to the CIA go back to the early days of the Cold War.
00:05:09As a young officer, he provides information on Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.
00:05:15In the 80s, Noriega is enlisted in Reagan's fight against communism.
00:05:20Noriega offers to help the CIA fight its covert Contra war in Nicaragua,
00:05:25which had become entangled with cocaine trafficking.
00:05:30But there's a piece to the story that's missing.
00:05:35Panama was created to be kind of like the Switzerland of Latin America.
00:05:40In the 1980s, the CIA was using these banks to launder money to pay for secret activities in Central America.
00:05:50And when General Noriega became the head of Panama, he became the trustee of this secret CIA banking system.
00:05:59But he started inviting Pablo Escobar and other narco traffickers to do their banking in Panama.
00:06:10Good morning, Panama!
00:06:12Panama!
00:06:18With American troops closing in, Noriega flees to the Vatican's embassy where he's given sanctuary.
00:06:27But the U.S. Army surrounds the embassy and begins blasting rock music 24 hours a day to drive him out.
00:06:34Soldiers phone in requests for songs like Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Van Halen's Panama.
00:06:51Undeterred, Noriega takes to the radio to rally his supporters to battle.
00:06:56To all Panamanians, this is General Manuel Noriega, our rallying cry is to overcome or die.
00:07:06Not to step backwards and to come forward the victors.
00:07:09But Noriega is surrounded by the world's most powerful army and a mob that wants his head.
00:07:28When he finally gives up, ten days later, it's agents from the DEA that cuff him and charge him as a drug trafficker.
00:07:35George Bush had to take out our ally because he violated the sacred trust of being the leader of Panama.
00:07:48The U.S. had to go in and break open those narco trafficker piggy banks,
00:07:54get the money out and give the DEA a roadmap to go after these cartels in the early 90s.
00:08:02As one boss is brought down in Panama, next door, another is about to rise.
00:08:15Cocaine is often still being processed in Colombia, but it wasn't being shipped as frequently through the traditional routes of Florida.
00:08:25Things were changing. Pablo Escobar was on the run. Others had been eliminated.
00:08:30One thing that's true about the war on drugs is that every time you eliminate one leader, somebody else gets a promotion.
00:08:39It's a law of physics almost.
00:08:41This is what began to happen in Mexico.
00:08:44On 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.
00:08:53Amado Carrillo Fuentes, born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where locals worship a drug trafficking saint and his favorite uncle as a legendary smuggler.
00:09:10Amado Carrillo Fuentes was a really strong, strong thinker and functioned more as a CEO than he ever did as a drug trapper.
00:09:21He determined that he could advance his objectives by dealing directly with the Colombians.
00:09:27Carrillo is here to make a deal with representatives of one of Colombia's most powerful cartels.
00:09:33The Cali Cartel, controlled by two brothers, Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Aurelia.
00:09:41For a decade, the brothers have had a gentleman's agreement with Pablo Escobar's more powerful Medellin Cartel to divide up cocaine distribution in the United States.
00:09:51But 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.
00:10:09The Cali Cartel wants to move more cocaine into the US, and the Mexican has a plan.
00:10:14A model determined that the Colombians were always receiving the lion's share, so we thought he'd be a little bit more sinister.
00:10:27He said to them, for every kilogram that I train ship for you, you pay me a product, you give me one half kilogram.
00:10:36So the Colombians thought to themselves, hey, no money, we'll just synthesize more.
00:10:40We'll just synthesize more.
00:10:43But then he started to deluge west of the Mississippi markets with his own product, gnawing at their market share.
00:10:50He started flying literally commercial airline loads of cocaine into Mexico.
00:10:57He had his own fleet.
00:10:59That's when Mario Curio Fuentes became known as Lord of the Skies.
00:11:04The Mexicans started to dominate the cocaine market in North America.
00:11:09Absolute brilliance.
00:11:11With General Noriega behind bars, and Pablo Escobar under increasing pressure,
00:11:17the Cali and Mexican cartels are free to take over and flood the United States with cheap cocaine.
00:11:23In the early 90s, the flow of cocaine coming into L.A. via Mexico,
00:11:26and the United States with the United States with the United States with the United States with the United States with the United States.
00:11:29In the early 90s, the flow of cocaine coming into L.A. via Mexico has made the city the center of the crack cocaine epidemic.
00:11:56Battles over the crack trade turn the streets into a war zone.
00:12:12L.A. county sees over 2,500 murders in 1992.
00:12:17Over seven a day.
00:12:18Most people don't understand that even though the crack epidemic started in the 80s,
00:12:33at the height of the crack epidemic, homicide skyrocketed in 1992.
00:12:40Everybody's carrying guns.
00:12:45Smoke some crack cocaine, and you see somebody and you perceive that individual to look at you disrespectfully, you're gonna kill it.
00:12:56With Los Angeles flooded with crack cocaine, the streets are about to explode.
00:13:01And two of America's most notorious gangs, the Bloods and Crips, will find surprising common ground.
00:13:20By the early 1990s, the crack epidemic has leveled inner city America.
00:13:24Crime and murder rates are at all-time highs.
00:13:27Los Angeles has been flooded with crack cocaine sold by two street gangs, Bloods and Crips.
00:13:36And Crips.
00:13:41I'm down by a lot and I quit my way around too much.
00:13:45Too many Crips, too much.
00:13:47Growing up in Watts, we didn't have the more positive black role models.
00:13:51The Martins, the Malcolms, so gangsters, drug dealers, these became our new role models.
00:13:57I was one of those young guys who was a street dealer, small street dealer, who sold crack just for survival purposes.
00:14:04Ninety percent of the community was involved in selling drugs.
00:14:09We've seen the violence that was surrounded by crack, people being murdered.
00:14:14And Watts was looking like a third world country.
00:14:17The crack trade is so dangerous for gang members.
00:14:21Traveling a few blocks outside your turf could mean a death sentence.
00:14:25Often it meant blood against blood, crip against crip.
00:14:29In charge of stopping the violence, Daryl Gates, LA's hard-as-nails top cop.
00:14:39We have a war, a shooting war, not in the Middle East right now.
00:14:44We have it on the streets of every major city in this country.
00:14:49And you know who's feeding and supporting the enemy?
00:14:55The casual drug user.
00:14:59Gates creates an elite paramilitary unit he calls Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH.
00:15:05Gates launches raids with military names like Operation Hammer.
00:15:18In one weekend, nearly 1500 people are rounded up and arrested.
00:15:24Dozens of officers raid apartment buildings, punching in walls.
00:15:27Even leaving their own graffiti on the sides of buildings.
00:15:42The Los Angeles Police Department up under Daryl Gates, they was kind of looked at as gang members themselves.
00:15:48I mean, it's like, man, they was untouchables.
00:15:50Keep your hands where I can see you, partner.
00:16:00But on March 3, 1991, relations between the LAPD and the citizens they police take a darker turn.
00:16:08It's not just about Rodney King, it's about this entire regime of policing that has grown more and more intense.
00:16:26The police were being told for now 20 years that they were fighting a war, that more and more of the public was the enemy, and thus war is the appropriate set of methodology.
00:16:50A year after the King beating, while a jury deliberates the fate of the officers charged, in South Central LA, something extraordinary is happening.
00:17:10A movement is brewing to bring peace to the warring gangs, a truce between Crips and Bloods.
00:17:21In order for us to get the respect of law enforcement, is that we had to respect ourselves first.
00:17:28Inspired by the 1982 Egypt-Israel peace agreement, Crip OG, Daud Sherils, calls a meeting of rival gang leaders.
00:17:41Y'all can give to your kids that your kids can look like that.
00:17:43The Israelis and...
00:17:45These people have a relationship in blood.
00:17:47We had Crips and Bloods fighting each other, who was really just black Americans fighting over a color.
00:17:59We started drafting a truce that fits the scenario of the environment in which we was coming from.
00:18:06No jobs, poor education, gangs, you know, drugs.
00:18:12Listen, y'all, we gotta take this back.
00:18:14There have been over 800 gang-related homicides in LA that year alone.
00:18:20Listen, listen, we need to calm it down.
00:18:23Are the drugs really that good in your neighborhood?
00:18:25That ain't the kind of money that y'all wanna be giving to y'all's kids.
00:18:29This is our community.
00:18:31It was difficult and hard.
00:18:33We talking about gang wars between all these different rival neighborhoods.
00:18:36We got people who've been shot, we got people that was in prison, based upon participation in some of these wars.
00:18:41And then nobody believed that it was possible.
00:18:44But after years of warfare, fueled by the crack cocaine explosion, the gangs agreed to a truce.
00:18:51And that we were some of the most notorious sets in the city of Los Angeles that we can unify and they can unify.
00:19:01But it's a black thing.
00:19:02It's a black thing.
00:19:03It's a black thing.
00:19:04It's a black thing.
00:19:05It's a black thing.
00:19:07As the word spreads, celebrations break out across South Central.
00:19:12Come out hundreds of young men and women converging on a whole neighborhood that they was at war with.
00:19:21Mothers crying.
00:19:22The word is circulating now, reunifying, getting the opportunity to know one another.
00:19:29Two days later, the celebrations will stop.
00:19:32Jury deliberations continue today in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney King.
00:19:50The city is on edge as it awaits the verdict in the Rodney King beating.
00:19:59During the trial, the police testified that King was high on PCP and displaying superhuman strength.
00:20:05I've seen this man shot with a taser, hit with a baton, a powerful blow in the head, and he was still on his feet.
00:20:20Right here! Right here!
00:20:23The people in the community, they're watching this.
00:20:26They're already angry.
00:20:27And they see themselves as Rodney King.
00:20:30I am Rodney King because they've done that to me.
00:20:35You know, and there's thousands of people that that's happened to.
00:20:38And they're watching this.
00:20:39And they're going, man, okay.
00:20:44We, the jury, find the defendant, Stacy C. Kuhn, not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury and with a deadly weapon.
00:21:01With a non-guilty verdict of four L.A. police officers, riots break out of neighborhoods across south-central L.A.
00:21:08Over 60 people die, and a billion dollars goes up in flames.
00:21:29Any time you have a citizenry base who historically was segregated, who was oppressed, and who was never given opportunities outside drugs, you know, then it adds up and it adds up, then it adds up, then it boils over.
00:21:48It led to the destruction of their own communities.
00:21:52After the smoke clears, gang leaders speak out, asking for alternatives to the drug trade.
00:22:04I'm talking about a future for my people, for me, for all my people.
00:22:11I'm talking about give us a future, give us a start to be independent so we can help ourselves, help our people, help our kids, give them something positive to look at daddy for.
00:22:19The streets of South Central become noticeably safer, murder rates plummet.
00:22:29Did the violence decrease as a reaction to the riots?
00:22:33Or because of a now forgotten truce between gang members?
00:22:37The reasons are still debated.
00:22:39Gates must go!
00:22:40Gates must go!
00:22:41Gates must go!
00:22:42Gates must go!
00:22:43But for Darrell Gates, his war on drugs is over.
00:22:46Gates must go!
00:22:47Gates must go!
00:22:48Gates must go!
00:22:49Gates must go!
00:22:50I go out of office without a tinge of anger, without a tinge of bitterness.
00:22:54I've had fun.
00:22:55This has been the grandest trip of my life.
00:22:58I loved every moment of it, and I love every moment right down to the very last moment.
00:23:03Thank you very much.
00:23:05The story of the militarization of American policing begins in many ways in Los Angeles.
00:23:12That is the first police department to start incorporating the methods of counterinsurgency from America's foreign wars directly into policing.
00:23:22The country was given a choice, and what happened was it doubled down on the war on drugs.
00:23:28In the heartland, a new drug is taking off, fueled by the sister of a Hollywood star.
00:23:51Because everybody here is the Mexican drug lords.
00:23:56I mean, that's what you see on TV.
00:23:58So I never considered myself a drug dealer, and then I realized I was one.
00:24:01I was one.
00:24:02I was one.
00:24:03I was one.
00:24:04I was one.
00:24:05I was one.
00:24:06I was one.
00:24:07I was one.
00:24:08In the early 1990s, crack cocaine is devastating America's inner cities.
00:24:18But in the heartland, another just as powerful drug is quietly gaining popularity and will give rise to an unlikely drug lord.
00:24:27Well, I grew up in kind of a back in time town, I guess.
00:24:32Leave your doors open.
00:24:36I have five brothers, one sister.
00:24:38Yeah, just a regular family, kind of.
00:24:42I grew up pretty quick.
00:24:44Junior high school, drinking.
00:24:46Mad Dog 2020, out front of school.
00:24:48Back then, black beauties, Christmas trees, pink hearts, that and pot.
00:24:53Lori Arnold is a sister of Hollywood star Tom Arnold.
00:24:58At the time, the sister-in-law of Roseanne Barr.
00:25:02First married at 14.
00:25:04By the time she's 20, she's living in a riverfront shack with her infant son and her husband Floyd,
00:25:10who runs a motorcycle gang called the Grim Reapers.
00:25:13Arnold's life changes when Floyd's brother offers her a line of a new drug.
00:25:18You didn't have to snort a lot of it, so we just have a little line to start with.
00:25:23It burns, and then once you get past that part, then the feeling starts.
00:25:30First sold as a cure-all for fatigue.
00:25:33Methamphetamine affects the central nervous system, instantly giving users a heightened sense of focus and energy.
00:25:39Adolf Hitler is high on meth for most of the war.
00:25:44Nazi soldiers take it so they can fight for days without sleep.
00:25:48Meth first takes hold in the United States in the 1950s.
00:25:52When it becomes popular with bikers, sleep-starved truckers, and adrenaline junkies surfers.
00:25:58But America's biggest amphetamine users are the ones you might not expect.
00:26:02American women often have the deciding voice in whatever we come to buy.
00:26:10It was known for years as Mother's Little Helper.
00:26:12The little pill that was meant to make the boring lives of American housewives more tolerable.
00:26:18You would actually see in magazine ads for those drugs directed at housewives.
00:26:23Red devil to embedding.
00:26:25U.S. government decided that it was going to crack down on the number of pep pills that were being made, which then created the underground market.
00:26:35Arnold takes a couple of grams to a local bar and offers some to friends.
00:26:42We all did some lines in the bathroom on the toilet tank.
00:26:49About a half hour later, everybody's just talking and dancing and having a good time and everything.
00:26:55Wanted more of that stuff.
00:26:59So I just started selling to just make some extra money.
00:27:03I lived in this $6,000 cabin.
00:27:04Didn't have heat.
00:27:05Didn't have running water.
00:27:07I started with just a little bit of eight ball, three and a half grams.
00:27:10So I'd get $25 for a quarter gram.
00:27:14And then I would get about five bucks out of that.
00:27:17I sold it.
00:27:18My brother-in-law brought me a quarter ounce.
00:27:19That went same day.
00:27:21So the next time he brought me a quarter pound, figure a hundred bucks a gram, I had quite a bit of money.
00:27:29You know, and I stashed it in my wall because I didn't know where else to put it.
00:27:34Soon, most of her friends are doing meth and rely on her for their next fix.
00:27:40It makes you sociable.
00:27:42It made them something they wanted to be, but didn't know how to be.
00:27:46Arnold buys a bar and it soon becomes the local party spot.
00:27:51But Arnold can't get enough product, so she looks for an out-of-state connection.
00:27:56Arnold's crew heads to California to meet with a Mexican supplier.
00:27:59They called themselves Mexican Mafia.
00:28:03Whether they were or not, I don't know.
00:28:05We got a little bit of vibe that they might be dangerous.
00:28:08And we always kept a check and took pictures of the property and what was around it so we could go get them if we had to.
00:28:16We didn't want any kind of violence or anything to happen to our friends.
00:28:22Or us.
00:28:24But I needed them at that time because, you know, they had good dope and it was cheap.
00:28:30So it was just strictly business with them.
00:28:33We keep driving this same car out there.
00:28:38Well, we don't want to get caught, of course.
00:28:41So I bought a car dealership.
00:28:43And just a small one.
00:28:45So we'd have a different car each time.
00:28:46The business picked up so much that we'd have to go out to California and Arizona every three days.
00:29:08So like, okay, well, we need to either find somewhere closer to get it or do it ourself.
00:29:13So I get some books, science type, like a catalog.
00:29:19And I say, okay, well, I can just order a lab right on here.
00:29:22So I just order parts, bought a lab.
00:29:26Arnold builds a lab in a trailer and hires the best chemist she can find.
00:29:31Hello?
00:29:33Hello?
00:29:35You in there? You lying there?
00:29:37Why don't you come in here?
00:29:44So he'd go up there three days.
00:29:48He didn't do his own stuff until after the batch was made.
00:29:52And he'd shoot it up because that's the way he could tell.
00:29:56He said if it was going to kill him, we didn't want to sell it.
00:29:59Yeah.
00:30:03Whoa, golly.
00:30:04Oh, she's crying.
00:30:05The investment in her lab pays off.
00:30:20Instead of paying like 10,000 a pound at that point, if I was getting somewhere else, it's about 2,000 to make it.
00:30:28At the height of her production, she's bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars every month.
00:30:34Lower level dealers begin buying Arnold's Pure product and cutting it several times, flooding entire regions of the Midwest with cheap meth.
00:30:44Crystal meth is nothing more really than some really good amphetamine.
00:30:49And it is a product of backyard cooks just simply figured out that they could use pseudoephedrine to cook up meth.
00:30:57Getting your hands on ephedrine or pseudoephedrine is as easy as buying cold medicine and crushing up the tablets.
00:31:07And all of this new profit streaming in does not go unnoticed by the pharmaceutical industry.
00:31:13People understand that a pseudoephedrine precursor is being used to cook up meth.
00:31:20And the pharmaceutical industry realizes it's selling an awful lot of this stuff.
00:31:29For the next 20 years, pharmaceutical companies will fight Congress's attempts to regulate the precursors for crystal meth.
00:31:36Mainstream pharmaceutical companies play an important role in this whole global production chain.
00:31:44They don't knowingly sell these amphetamines to drug dealers, but that is the source that methamphetamine is made from.
00:31:52I did work for a number of large manufacturers over my 15 year tenure in the industry.
00:32:00And what I saw was that market share and the profit and bottom line, you know, getting the sales for the shareholders was the primary motivation of each company.
00:32:13But Arnold needs industrial amounts of chemicals, so she uses her used car lot as a front.
00:32:18I could order any of the chemicals I needed.
00:32:22So I get a 55 gallon drum, cost me $55,000.
00:32:26They deliver it.
00:32:28The money starts rolling in.
00:32:30She buys a dirt track racing car, a 140 acre ranch and 50 race horses.
00:32:36I'm driving around in a tunnel, Iowa with a red Jaguar and diamonds over my hands and got all these houses.
00:32:42I mean, it's pretty obvious, but, you know, as long as nobody's getting hurt, you know, I'm not doing anything wrong because I'm helping people live.
00:32:52You know, I'm helping the economy.
00:32:56But federal agents have been tracking Arnold's California connections and they've also been watching her.
00:33:02We've been partying like a week straight.
00:33:06They waited until everybody went to bed.
00:33:09I woke up with a guy sitting on top of me.
00:33:12All I thought was something on my head and his gun barrels resting on my forehead.
00:33:30Looked around. I'm like, okay, I got FBI. I got DEA. I got OPD. I said, where's ACDC at? You know, trying to make a lighter situation.
00:33:41You know, lighter situation out of the whole thing.
00:33:52The feds charged me with 350 pounds of meth and $10 million in money laundering.
00:34:01Nobody wants to be a drug dealer. I mean, I don't think.
00:34:04That's not what your goal is in life.
00:34:06So I thought everybody gets bond, you know, so I'll get bonded out in the video.
00:34:13Nope. I didn't go home for 20 years.
00:34:17So, yeah, it's crazy.
00:34:19And Lori Arnold's story is sort of an exemplar story of the irony of the war on drugs.
00:34:30We're a country that we pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial spirit.
00:34:34And yet we're completely baffled when we look at somebody like Lori Arnold and ask, well, why would this nice person from the Midwest get into drug dealing?
00:34:44Well, she was an American.
00:34:46It unleashed the animal spirits of her capitalism.
00:34:48And meth, in the short term for her, had a wonderful effect on her life.
00:34:56And then it destroyed it, of course.
00:34:57Eventually, the DEA will begin a sweeping crackdown on domestic meth producers.
00:35:23But new, more powerful forces are about to move into the meth business.
00:35:35The drug market in the United States is constantly changing.
00:35:40You will see that the Mexican cartels take over the meth market in the United States from what was originally a domestic operation
00:35:48and expand their authority over the drug trade.
00:36:07Deep in the heart of the Santa Monica Mountains, just north of Los Angeles, the war on drugs is about to find an unlikely victim.
00:36:15Donald P. Scott, an eccentric 61-year-old millionaire who lives on a sprawling 200-acre ranch he calls Trails End.
00:36:28On the morning of October 2, 1992,
00:36:34heavily armed policemen smash through Scott's front door.
00:36:38Scott comes rushing downstairs with a pistol he keeps for hold protection.
00:36:42Before he can understand what's happening, police shoot Scott two times in the chest and arm.
00:36:55The police claim Scott was growing marijuana in the attempt to take possession of the dead man's ranch using a powerful weapon in the war on drugs arsenal.
00:37:12Civil asset forfeiture. The laws allow federal and state authorities to seize money and property allegedly associated with a crime.
00:37:17Civil asset forfeiture is the idea that not the individual but property can be charged with a crime, prosecuted, taken in by the government, and then law enforcement gets to keep almost all of those assets within law enforcement itself.
00:37:37The Donald Scott case shows the potential dangers of asset forfeiture laws.
00:37:45When no evidence of drug activity is found on the property, the Ventura County District Attorney's Office investigates.
00:37:51They conclude that one of the motivations behind the raid was the seizure of Scott's land.
00:37:58The police don't succeed in seizing the ranch from Donald Scott's widow.
00:38:04But the case is just one of a growing trend in the war on drugs.
00:38:08It's almost a separate reality. People can get arrested and have their properties seized.
00:38:23They may never be convicted of a crime. They may actually never even be charged with a crime.
00:38:29But their home could be taken from them, their car could be taken from them, if in fact they were believed to have been involved in criminal activity.
00:38:38By 2014, authorities will take in more money through civil asset forfeiture than was stolen in all burglaries across the country.
00:38:46Cash, homes, cars, and entire estates are taken by authorities from people they say are involved in drugs.
00:38:59The 1992 presidential campaign. A young candidate promises a new era in American politics.
00:39:18Hi, old lady. What's your name?
00:39:20Destiny. Destiny. What a wonderful name.
00:39:24Boy, are we glad to meet you. We've been looking for you for months.
00:39:29William Jefferson Clinton. Raised in rural Arkansas, Clinton rise to become governor of the state, then the Democratic Party's breakout star.
00:39:40I want every person in this hall and every person in this land to reach out and join us in a great new adventure.
00:39:50He played saxophone. He was more down and more black than Jewish Bush.
00:40:01So he was deemed as the first black president because he smoked weed. He played the saxophone.
00:40:06But when Clinton's challenged over his alleged marijuana use, it becomes a defining moment of his career.
00:40:17I experimented with marijuana a time or two and I didn't like it. And didn't inhale and never tried it again.
00:40:24If he answered, yes, I did use marijuana, he lost older Democrats who would have voted for him.
00:40:31If he said, no, I didn't use marijuana, he lost baby boomers and younger folks who don't believe him.
00:40:38So the perfect answer ultimately became, yes, I did, but no, I didn't inhale.
00:40:44Clinton was sort of at the head of a parade of disingenuous baby boomers about their marijuana use or drug use in general.
00:40:53But Clinton can't escape the drug issue. The crack epidemic is in full swing.
00:41:00And the crime rate is nearly the highest in American history, with over two million violent crimes in 1993 alone.
00:41:12There is a combination of exaggeration and hype and also real crisis.
00:41:19This is when crime rates actually peak in the United States.
00:41:25And at the time, people didn't know that it was the peak, right?
00:41:28They thought maybe it was going to go up, up and up.
00:41:32A lot of us perceive who Clinton was and, you know, it's like the great white hope for black community.
00:41:40Do solemnly swear.
00:41:42I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear.
00:41:46Bill Clinton comes into office but faces too much pushback and, by 1994, is presiding over the biggest, baddest, omnibus criminal justice bill of the war on drugs.
00:42:03For six years, Washington debated a crime bill without action.
00:42:09While more and more children died and more and more children became criminals.
00:42:15But today, at last, the waiting ends.
00:42:20Clinton passes the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
00:42:33It puts 100,000 more cops on the streets and earmarks billions for new prisons.
00:42:38There was a choice and the answer was more drug war.
00:42:43That's the story of the Clinton drug war.
00:42:46The ironic thing about it is that as Clinton was passing the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 94, at the same time, he gave international drug traffickers a huge gift.
00:42:59A new trade agreement will open the doors for Mexican cartels to send massive amounts of drugs across the border.
00:43:11And the drug lord will start eliminating the competition to control the lucrative trade.
00:43:16The New York Times
00:43:18The New York Times
00:43:19The New York Times
00:43:20The New York Times
00:43:22The New York Times
00:43:23The New York Times
00:43:24The New York Times
00:43:26The New York Times
00:43:27The New York Times
00:43:28The New York Times
00:43:29Cancun, one of Mexico's most popular resort towns.
00:43:34Hey, Mum.
00:43:35Hi there.
00:43:37Having a good time on the beach here?
00:43:39I wish you were here.
00:43:40It's 35 degrees.
00:43:41It's safe for having a good birthday, I think, yeah?
00:43:43Yeah.
00:43:44But among the tourists is one of the country's most wanted drug traffickers, on the run with his family in tow.
00:44:03Assassins have just killed the Juarez Cartel's Rafael Aguilar Guillardo, one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords, and left his son critically wounded.
00:44:15When police arrest the killers, they learn they were hired by one of his own.
00:44:21Amado Carrillo Fuentes has now taken full control of the Juarez Cartel.
00:44:30Juarez was really the most important border city when it came to smuggling drugs.
00:44:34It's not much to look at, but for drug traffickers, this is an absolute Shangri-La.
00:44:40Juarez, Mexico is just on the other side of the border from El Paso, Texas, making it the perfect hub for drug trafficking.
00:44:47The history of drug smuggling is all about securing trade routes.
00:44:55From the Mafia's control of Havana to move their French connection heroin, to the CIA's secret bases in Laos, where opium was trafficked by the ton by its Air America Airlines.
00:45:06To Carlos Leiter's bohemian private island, a way station for the Medellin Cartel's cocaine smuggling into Florida.
00:45:15Now under Carrillo's leadership, the Juarez Cartel is on the front door of the U.S.
00:45:21along the entire border, of course, there will be smaller amounts that are transported by motorcycles and any other type of vehicle.
00:45:31But the large amounts in the tractor trailers, they all move toward a type of choke point.
00:45:38What is connected to many of the larger byways that allow for the movement of larger amounts to the north.
00:45:45As Carrillo consolidates his power in the strategic city of Juarez, his main suppliers in Cali, Colombia, launch a dirty war against their rival.
00:45:56The Cali Cartel's primary mission in life is to get rid of Pablo Escobar.
00:46:02So they formed this group called the Pepes, the people persecuted by Pablo Escobar, and they began doing what the police hadn't been willing to do, what DEA hadn't been willing to do.
00:46:13Los Pepes torture and kill Escobar's lawyers and accountants.
00:46:18They burn his antique car collection, kill his racehorses and their trainers, and attempt to destroy everything he loves.
00:46:27And his accusations, they have help.
00:46:31The DEA had contact with some of the Pepes.
00:46:35What they needed was for the DEA and the police to stand out of the way and let them do what they wanted to do.
00:46:41Under pressure from Los Pepes and the U.S. and Colombian governments, Escobar finally makes a mistake.
00:46:53A trace phone call leads the DEA and the Colombian police to a quiet Medellin neighborhood.
00:47:05Police have searched over 15,000 houses looking for Escobar.
00:47:17This time, they kicked down the right door.
00:47:19Let's go out and realize that it was pretty much over and he couldn't go back to prison.
00:47:24So his options were to die or to die.
00:47:30He hears the police downstairs and climbs out on the roof.
00:47:33But he's surrounded.
00:47:40And the most famous drug lord in history goes down for good.
00:47:44When Pablo Escobar was finally killed, thousands of people turned up to his funeral to pay their respects.
00:48:00Despite the fact that this was a guy who had terrorized Colombia for years,
00:48:03he was responsible for the murders of thousands of people.
00:48:06And yet his public image really was quite strong.
00:48:11It was a rainy day and there was a little chapel.
00:48:17Everybody's pushing in around the chapel to the degree they broke all the windows in the chapel.
00:48:22And at the top of this little knoll was Pablo Escobar's mother.
00:48:26She started yelling, those are journalists and they're responsible for the death of my son.
00:48:33We thought we were just going to be there sort of taking notes and observing.
00:48:37And suddenly people just turned on us and they were spitting at us, kicking us.
00:48:41And we were trying to get out as best we could, but it was so slippery we kept falling on the wet grass.
00:48:47And what I remember is this sort of sense of panic.
00:48:49These guys were actually going to kill us.
00:48:50And the mother just kept screaming.
00:48:52She just wouldn't stop.
00:48:53We're like, man, we'll get out of here.
00:49:00Cocaine will be made and sold in Colombia long after Escobar's death.
00:49:05But as Colombian authorities continue pressuring their cartels,
00:49:09the power and wealth shifts north to the Mexican drug lords.
00:49:13And they're about to get some unexpected help from an American president who claimed he never inhaled.
00:49:22The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, is sold as a boon for corporations looking to make goods cheaper and get them to market faster.
00:49:34This is our opportunity to provide an impetus to freedom and democracy in Latin America and create new jobs for America as well.
00:49:42It's a good deal, and we ought to take it. Thank you.
00:49:47To this day, politicians are still facing blowback from the NAFTA vote.
00:49:51So Bill Clinton knows that this is going to be extremely close, and he orders the DEA and his drug advisers not to say word one about what the effect of NAFTA is going to be.
00:50:04If the drug policy concerns had been able to be aired at the time, it's quite likely that NAFTA would have failed.
00:50:13NAFTA passes. Restrictions on trade are all but eliminated.
00:50:18And economies on both sides of the border benefit.
00:50:21But few benefit more than Mexico's drug traffickers.
00:50:24The border is not a line in the sand. It's a zone.
00:50:34And everything that happens in that zone is different than what happens outside of it.
00:50:39The rules are different. The game is different. Everything.
00:50:42Corruption and the drug trade, they're all kind of intermixed.
00:50:45It's the dawn of a new era in the war on drugs.
00:50:52At the crossing between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, thousands of trucks stream across the border.
00:51:00It doesn't take long for the cartels to think up ways to beat the overwhelmed border agents.
00:51:06When customs agents make a bust, sometimes it's all part of the cartel's plan.
00:51:12They will go to the individual driver and they'll say, look, you're going to be the pitfall.
00:51:20But we're going to take care of your family and we're going to take care of you.
00:51:25So they lose a small shipment compared to these large shipments.
00:51:31Let's say you have 1,400 trucks.
00:51:34And let's say that 400 of them are crossing two or three tons of drugs.
00:51:39And let's say that the immigration stops 10 of the trucks.
00:51:44That's nothing.
00:51:46NAFTA was a dream for the drug cartels.
00:51:51Drugs is big money.
00:51:54And NAFTA was big money and continues to be big money.
00:51:58And no one benefits more than Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
00:52:08With NAFTA in effect and Escobar dead, Carrillo has a clear path to the top of the drug trade.
00:52:14He knew that money can buy everything in Mexico.
00:52:20He was like a rowing hood.
00:52:24He was nice to everybody and everybody was nice to him.
00:52:29That's why he has this big network of people who was protecting him.
00:52:33When DEA started pursuing Amado's wealth, his ill-gotten gains, Amado started feeling the pressure.
00:52:52Amado actually became a victim of his own wealth.
00:52:57There was too much money.
00:52:58A nightclub in Seattle at the height of Grunge Rock.
00:53:13A powerful white powder made from a small bright flower is the drug of choice.
00:53:20Are you okay?
00:53:31Somebody help! Help!
00:53:34Over the past year, Seattle has seen a huge increase in overdoses.
00:53:40All from one drug.
00:53:43Ally! Ally!
00:53:45When the voice of a generation, Nirvana's lead singer, Kurt Cobain, kills himself with a shotgun.
00:53:56High levels of heroin are found in his blood.
00:54:00Heroin chic takes hold.
00:54:03The fashion industry helps transform it from a taboo drug into something cool.
00:54:08Heroin gains popularity across the decade's diverse subcultures.
00:54:13And this slacker generation is created.
00:54:17You know, the 90s, you get the grunge movement out of Seattle.
00:54:21And also, there's a bit of a 60s revivalism going on.
00:54:25The Grateful Dead have never stopped touring, but they're all of a sudden popular among kids again.
00:54:30And it's heroin that contributes to the death of the Dead's founding father, Jerry Garcia.
00:54:36Bill Clinton even calls it a cultural death.
00:54:37This is what happens to your brain after starting heroin.
00:54:46But few people are aware that heroin is also fueling a conflict that's killing thousands half a world away.
00:54:53In Afghanistan, a civil war is locked in a bloody stalemate, and the country is near total collapse.
00:55:16An army of religious fanatics rise from the opium-rich south to bring order to the chaos.
00:55:30The Taliban were just simple village folk. Many of them could barely read.
00:55:38The Taliban are under the command of Mullah Omar, a top marksman who loses an eye in battle.
00:55:45His background is shrouded in mystery.
00:55:47The mythology, at least, is that some villagers outside of Tandahar approach Mullah Omar.
00:55:58They say, look, there's a local thug, a bandit, who had been raping some girls and terrorizing villagers.
00:56:03And so, Mullah Omar gathers up some of his friends and they go, they find this guy,
00:56:08and they hang him from the barrel of an old broken-down Soviet tank.
00:56:13And they begin to shut down these petty little warlords one after the other.
00:56:21But Mullah Omar knows the key to a Taliban victory lies here in Afghanistan's largest cash crop.
00:56:30The opium poppy.
00:56:31Afghanistan is in the heart of the so-called Golden Crescent, a region rich in opium poppy cultivation.
00:56:43But it wasn't always that way.
00:56:45In the 1950s, the Soviet Union and the United States are competing in a global Cold War for power and influence.
00:56:53Afghanistan was right on the doorstep of the Soviet Empire.
00:56:56Afghanistan successfully played both sides off against the middle.
00:57:02President Eisenhower authorizes one of the largest aid packages in U.S. history.
00:57:08The goal? Transform Afghanistan into a modern nation and win its people over to our side.
00:57:17America finances highways and entire cities.
00:57:21New dams irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres.
00:57:24Wheat, fruit, and cotton sprout from the desert.
00:57:29But farmers soon begin to notice the newly irrigated salty soil is perfect for another, much more profitable crop.
00:57:37The opium poppy.
00:57:40The United States has inadvertently created the perfect conditions for a drug boom that will one day become entangled with a new war.
00:57:48A war on terror.
00:57:49The seeds of terror.
00:57:54The seeds of terror are planted in 1979.
00:57:58The Soviet Union has invaded Afghanistan to prop up a failing communist government.
00:58:02And when President Reagan takes office, Soviet aggression becomes one of its most pressing issues.
00:58:12The Reagan administration starts thinking about, okay, well what can we do about this growing threat?
00:58:17We can't fight the Soviets head on.
00:58:18We can back insurgency groups that even if they're not aligned with us, they're at least against our enemies.
00:58:28The U.S. government realizes, whoa, this is the way that we can give the Soviets their Vietnam.
00:58:34The CIA begins financing a small force of religious warriors known as the Mujahideen.
00:58:41There's a wave of international volunteers comes in to support the Mujahideen.
00:59:01They're actually recruiting centers for the Mujahideen in Brooklyn.
00:59:04The Mujahideen had always been asking the Saudis who were sending money, he said, send us a Saudi prince.
00:59:09Apparently none of the princes wanted to go.
00:59:11So they send the next best thing, one of the sons of the top construction company in Saudi Arabia.
00:59:17Osama bin Laden is the 17th son of one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia.
00:59:22He helps finance a support group of Mujahideen fighters.
00:59:27He calls it the base or Al Qaeda.
00:59:33The CIA looks the other direction as its new Cold War allies find alternative ways to finance their war.
00:59:41The Mujahideen start collecting a poppy tax from farmers.
00:59:44The United States was interested in undermining the Soviet presence.
00:59:52There was not as much an emphasis put on the pursuit of drug traffickers.
00:59:57In fact, there was none.
00:59:59The Mujahideen sent hundreds of tons of raw opium to heroin labs across the border in Pakistan,
01:00:05creating a million addicts and feeding new habits in Europe and beyond.
01:00:09After a decade of war, the Soviet Union pulls its troops out.
01:00:19A superpower defeated by a small guerrilla force financed by the CIA and drugs.
01:00:25In the wake of the Soviet retreat, Afghanistan devolves into civil war.
01:00:39And many former Mujahideen find a new cause, the Taliban.
01:00:43Mullah Omar's Taliban took the capital, Kabul.
01:00:50And like the Mujahideen before it, the Taliban used opium to finance their goals.
01:00:57There were edicts that said it's not a sin to sell drugs to non-believers,
01:01:02but you shouldn't do drugs yourself.
01:01:04So they allowed the people to grow poppy and they taxed.
01:01:07The country is now a religious narco state.
01:01:12The Taliban begin executing women for adultery and destroying ancient monuments.
01:01:18And Mullah Omar welcomes back his old friend Osama bin Laden in his Al Qaeda network.
01:01:27The colossally tragic irony is that our efforts in Afghanistan to help them defeat the Soviets during the Cold War
01:01:42lay the groundwork for the war that we would then have to fight, the war on terror.
01:01:46While Afghanistan is deteriorating into a narco state,
01:02:07and Mexico is not far behind,
01:02:10Back home, the war on drugs is starting to see results.
01:02:18Our great challenge is to take our streets back from crime and gangs and drugs.
01:02:23In New York City, murders are down 25%.
01:02:27In St. Louis, 18%.
01:02:29In Seattle, 32%.
01:02:31The crime bill of 1994 is critical.
01:02:34Let us stick with a strategy that's working and keep the crime rate coming down.
01:02:38After reaching all-time highs in the early 90s, crime is down across the country.
01:02:45But the effects of President Clinton's get-tough policies are just beginning to be felt.
01:02:49Douglas Lindsay, a 26-year-old Army veteran making his way through college while working as a mental health professional at night.
01:03:08But Lindsay is struggling for money.
01:03:15To finance his education, he sells pot and crack cocaine.
01:03:19It'll soon catch up to him.
01:03:22Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill was one of the most far-reaching laws in American history.
01:03:27Pushing policies like three strikes, you're out, and long mandatory sentences for drug dealers.
01:03:34Mandatory minimum sentencing largely removes judges from the decision-making process.
01:03:42They become autotoms where they just simply have the amount of weight of the drugs,
01:03:47the circumstances that they were caught in, come up with some calculation,
01:03:50and come up with a multi-decade prison sentence.
01:03:54There's a proliferation of three strikes laws.
01:03:57The amount of time that people are now doing for relatively small amounts of drugs increases massively.
01:04:05It's not only that more people are going to prison, but it's that people are staying for longer.
01:04:10This reverberates through the communities.
01:04:12A year after his last drug deal,
01:04:23Lindsay is arrested by federal agents.
01:04:29And when seven of his friends who are arrested with him are threatened with long, mandatory sentences,
01:04:35they agree to cooperate with the government, testifying that Lindsay was their ringleader.
01:04:42Mandatory minimum sentences created a velveted glove over the head of anybody who had been busted for drugs,
01:04:50and it incentivized them to take a plea bargain for decades that they otherwise would not take the chance at trial.
01:04:58You just simply didn't want to take the chance of getting 50 or 60 years in jail
01:05:02when you were supposed to be okay with settling for 10 years.
01:05:10But Lindsay takes the case to trial.
01:05:15He's convicted of two felony charges, and at a sentencing hearing pleads for mercy.
01:05:21This is my first time offense, sir.
01:05:23I've never before been convicted of a crime.
01:05:26Please.
01:05:27Under new mandatory sentencing laws, Douglas Lindsay faces at least 10 years.
01:05:33On Christmas Eve 1996, the judge sentences him to life in prison.
01:05:40A lot of people who heard Clinton admit on the campaign trail that he had smoked a joint
01:05:46expected he would maybe dismantle aspects of the war on drugs.
01:05:51But in fact, the opposite happened.
01:05:57Starting in the early 1990s, and really accelerating under Clinton,
01:06:03the war on drugs became increasingly to be about how many Americans were being put into prison.
01:06:08The more the U.S. government increased its targeting of street dealers, the more dealers they created,
01:06:23because they created a class of people who could work in no other industry but the drug trade.
01:06:42And this is how the war on drugs has perpetuated itself.
01:06:46It's almost Halloween night, and three members of the Hispanic street gang known as F-13 are driving around Huntington Beach looking for blood.
01:07:05They think they've just found a rival gang member's house.
01:07:08They've missed their target.
01:07:19The shooter, Jose Munguilla, has killed an innocent 11-year-old girl.
01:07:26He and his friends have just crossed the line set by one of the most dangerous gangs in the country.
01:07:34La Eme, also known as the Mexican Mafia, a Mexican-American street gang whose leaders reside in California's prisons.
01:07:58They rule over numerous Hispanic gangs on the outside with a strict code of street justice.
01:08:07Their disciples carry out murders, kidnappings, and extortion.
01:08:11But their most lucrative business is drugs.
01:08:13The Mexican Mafia, they got a lot of power.
01:08:18This idea that the Mexican cartels control street-level drug operations is not correct.
01:08:28They control the flow of the drugs, but they don't control the street-level operations.
01:08:34The distribution of drugs are controlled by the street-level gangs, like the Mexican Mafia.
01:08:46September 1993, Elysian Park, Los Angeles.
01:08:50More than a thousand gang members from across Southern California converge.
01:08:54La Eme has called a meeting to lay down a series of laws for the gangs under their control.
01:09:03The goal, keep away unwanted attention from the authorities.
01:09:07Preserve the drug trade at all costs.
01:09:10Scores should be settled face-to-face.
01:09:13Those who break the rules will pay.
01:09:15So they passed a directive that anybody caught doing drive-bys from then on was gonna be targeted.
01:09:28Killed or, you know, assaulted.
01:09:31Primarily killed.
01:09:38It's a week after the little girl's death, and the shooter, Jose Manguilla, is at home.
01:09:43Two fellow gang members have come to enforce the Elysian Park rules.
01:09:51Now remember, killing to these individuals is not that big of a deal.
01:09:58They've already done it.
01:10:06What's up, home?
01:10:07I don't think it was that difficult of a thing for them to do, to go over there, knock on the door, and say,
01:10:15hey, you know, sorry homeboy, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then walk away.
01:10:19Munguilla dies almost instantly.
01:10:24The killers are arrested later that night.
01:10:28Inside the California State Prison, the two killers are arrested later that night.
01:10:43They're now part of a vast criminal enterprise whose headquarters are behind bars.
01:10:44They're now part of a vast criminal enterprise whose headquarters are behind bars.
01:10:46The Mexican Mafia is composed of elites, of street gang members. The cream of the crop, in other words.
01:10:50They're charismatic. They're intelligent. They speak well. They educate themselves on what they're doing.
01:10:57They're charismatic. They're intelligent. They speak well. They educate themselves on what they're doing.
01:11:00Mecha Valley and, you know, philosophy.
01:11:11Really exceptional individuals criminally.
01:11:16And if they're not exceptional individuals when they get into Mecha Valley, they do what they want.
01:11:23Right.
01:11:24They're really exceptional individuals criminally.
01:11:27exceptional individuals when they get in the Mexican Mafia, they will be by the
01:11:32time they leave. The 1990s sees an almost 50% increase in the prison
01:11:39population and with it a new level of sophistication in prison gangs. Within
01:11:45the prisoner network was completely controlled by these gangs to the point
01:11:50where they buy the guards and by corrupting the guards they take over
01:11:53control of the prisons. They were able to get drugs into the prisons, they were able
01:11:58to deal drugs within the prisons. Mexican Mafia became unbelievably powerful. The
01:12:03feds tried to break that up so they would take these guys from these prisons and
01:12:08spread them out all over the country but by doing that all they did was create
01:12:12regimes within prisons that had never seen him before. Other race-based gangs
01:12:20take control of prisons across the country including the Aryan Brotherhood,
01:12:25the Black Guerrillas and Nuestra Familia all with their own piece of a
01:12:30nationwide drug distribution network.
01:12:41Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Lord of the Skies, has become the richest drug
01:12:46trafficker in the world but Carrillo's control over much of Mexico's drug trade
01:12:51has not gone unnoticed. As the pressure was turned up by the Mexicans and DEA he
01:12:56became obsessed with his own safety to the extent that he was traveling in
01:13:01ambulances that were conventional on the outside, opulent on the inside. He had
01:13:04body doubles prancing around Mexico to throw others off his trail and even to the
01:13:11extent that he decided to change his physical appearance. Carrillo has taken
01:13:17over an entire floor of a Mexico City maternity ward.
01:13:24A plastic surgeon team traveled to Mexico and agreed to alter not only his facial
01:13:31features but also his rather corpulent body. Throughout a 10-hour surgery, 30
01:13:41pounds of fatty tissue were taken from his body and his face was altered
01:13:47considerably. The count goes from some of those present in the room. He woke up and
01:13:54was feeling such great pain. Reached for a gun, ordered more pain medication and when
01:14:03the doctor was looking at the bore of a handgun, he decided best to do what the boss said.
01:14:08Well done!
01:14:09It is said that Amaro,
01:14:39the Lord of the Skies, died of respiratory arrest.
01:14:46The circumstances of his death are so mysterious
01:14:49that some think he faked it and escaped.
01:15:06But the gory truth soon comes out.
01:15:09DEA and the Mexican authorities went to the location where they found the body.
01:15:14His body is so disfigured that his identity can only be confirmed by fingerprints and DNA.
01:15:21He looked like a Frankenstein monster because he was all stitched
01:15:24and there was so much reconfiguration of his body.
01:15:27It's not the only grisly find made by authorities.
01:15:30It is.
01:15:31Months later, Mexican workers discover cement-filled oil drums.
01:15:35Inside are the badly decayed remains of two of Carrillo's doctors and another unidentified person.
01:15:42Each has been handcuffed and blindfolded, burned and tortured, their fingernails pulled out.
01:15:47But the killing has just started.
01:15:54Now the city of Juarez is up for grabs as rival factions battle it out to control the Juarez cartel.
01:16:01The city experiences a bloodletting as the bodies of traffickers litter the streets.
01:16:08When Amado died, the other cartels knew the power he left doing business with the Colombians was open for everybody.
01:16:19So it was this empire that became headless after he died.
01:16:34Three years after Carrillo's death, a changing of the guard is taking place.
01:16:39The nation's ruling party is on the edge of collapse.
01:16:43They've lost the presidential election for the first time in 70 years.
01:16:47The institutional revolutionary party, also known as the PRI, had a grip over Mexican politics,
01:16:53Mexican life, and also the Mexican drug trafficking trade.
01:16:57An academic once called it the perfect dictatorship.
01:17:01As long as the cartels kept quiet, they didn't engage in any killing sprees or any major disruptions,
01:17:07the PRI more or less allowed the cartels to do their own thing.
01:17:11The PRI has left the people in poverty, the peso nearly worthless,
01:17:15and the cartels are wary of the new regime's promise to fight drugs and corruption.
01:17:24One man, however, is not waiting to find out if they follow through.
01:17:27Pacing around the medical bay of Puente Grande Prison is Joaquin Guzman Larrera, also known as El Chapo.
01:17:40El Chapo is one of the leaders of the Juarez Cartel's rivals, Sinaloa.
01:17:44A former protege of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, he's in prison for the murder of the Cardinal of Guadalajara.
01:17:53He has a logistical mindset, so he was able to figure out how to move product,
01:17:57and he was ruthless enough to deal with rivals because at his level, you know, they're all apex predators,
01:18:02and, you know, it's kill or be killed, and he was able to survive that world.
01:18:07He's in prison, so he's in prison, and he's in prison for the murder of Guadalajara.
01:18:17Chapo has been enjoying a privileged life in prison, paying off his guards.
01:18:22But with a new government in place, he's worried he'll be extradited to the U.S. on trafficking charges.
01:18:28A riot alarm goes off.
01:18:36Five SWAT officers storm the medical bay.
01:18:44They hand Chapo riot gear, a gun, and a mask.
01:18:49Six officers walk out the front door of the prison.
01:18:58The brazen escape is a new low for the Mexican government and the police.
01:19:08But it's not a surprise.
01:19:11Anybody that thinks that Chapo Guzman escapes is not dealing with reality.
01:19:17Chapo Guzman can do whatever he wants to do in Mexico.
01:19:20And there's a reason that Amado Carrillo Fuentes and Chapo Guzman, among others, have stated,
01:19:26why would I want to be president of Mexico? I am more powerful than they are.
01:19:32And it's a pretty accurate statement.
01:19:35Over the next decade, the cartels will become more violent, more powerful,
01:19:39and bring new agony to its country and its neighbors.
01:19:43But an even more fearsome act of violence is about to be unleashed on the United States.
01:19:48And the seeds were planted decades before on a continent far away.
01:20:05Suicide bombers have attacked the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
01:20:10224 people die in the twin attacks.
01:20:19And the blame soon falls on the son of a Saudi billionaire turned Islamic radical.
01:20:25Many people have come to think that Bin Laden's first attack on America was 9-11.
01:20:31In fact, Bin Laden's first attack was the 1998 Nairobi bombing.
01:20:40These acts of terrorist violence are abhorrent. They are inhuman.
01:20:45We will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice.
01:20:51Before the Al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam,
01:21:01Osama Bin Laden was forced to flee Sudan, where he had been operating from.
01:21:06And he came back to the one country he knew would welcome him, which is Afghanistan.
01:21:13Pressure builds on Afghanistan's Taliban government to turn over Bin Laden,
01:21:18as sanctions and famine crippled the nation's economy.
01:21:21The Taliban had an enormous PR problem by this point.
01:21:24They had blown up the Bamiyan Buddhas.
01:21:27They were beheading people and chopping off their hands in football stadiums around the country.
01:21:32They were under enormous pressure to give up Bin Laden and the enormous amount of drugs
01:21:37that were coming out of Afghanistan. And so by banning farmers from growing poppy,
01:21:44they could get a PR win.
01:21:50The Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, issues a fatwa on opium. Production across Afghanistan grinds to a
01:21:58halt as the Taliban punish farmers who defy them. Within a year, 65% of the world's opium has seemingly
01:22:06disappeared. American and UN officials hail the crackdown. There's only one problem. It's a scam.
01:22:17They came up with a strategy that was very, very clever. They went to the international community
01:22:22and said that they were going to ban farmers from growing opium. But very quietly, they continued to
01:22:29allow opium traffickers and heroin producers to process opium into heroin. And they continued to
01:22:36allow narcotics to be exported. It was like an insider trading deal. They pulled a fast one on the
01:22:42international community. With a drop in supply, Afghan traffickers sell their surplus opium at a premium,
01:22:51making millions. Everybody kind of wanted a good news story about Afghanistan. Everybody wanted something
01:23:01to succeed and something to seem to be moving in the right direction. So again, you have this
01:23:08willingness by the US government not to look at the problem too closely because you might not like what
01:23:13you see. America sends millions in aid as they stockpile tons of raw opium in warehouses. The Bush
01:23:22administration gave them 43 million dollars to support these drug eradication efforts. That was in
01:23:29early spring of 2001. And as everybody knows, history took quite a different course later that year.
01:23:43Four months later, on a sunny September morning,
01:23:52a new war will begin.
01:23:56With both the war on terror and the war on drugs, the US government, its leadership openly declared wars
01:24:04on these open-ended enemies and phenomenon. And people would make light of the fact that
01:24:12how do you declare a war on terror? It's not a country. It's not a person. It's an idea. And
01:24:21similarly, how do you declare a war on drugs, which are used commonly throughout the world? They're grown
01:24:30everywhere. And there's a principle at work here. And it's that, you know, one thing that really makes a state
01:24:39grow and thrive is having a war. On the final episode of America's War on Drugs.
01:24:479-11 happened, and the United States invaded one of the largest opium producers in the world.
01:24:55These terrorists must be pursued and brought to justice. And that effect war, the Patriot Act,
01:25:00is that it refueled the war on drugs. I helped murder families in Colombia. Mexican cops will go out and
01:25:06carry out a hit. And then they'll come back a couple of hours later and investigate the murder they just
01:25:10committed. Broke in many innocent discs, an invitation to your own murder. You smoked it and
01:25:16you certainly said, wait a minute, this stuff isn't so bad. We got some legal weed. They're working with
01:25:22one cartel to take out another cartel. It's time to stop the drugs from pouring into our country.
01:25:32We're all concerned about cocaine and heroin, but we're legally killing you and we're getting away with it.
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