Inside The Cartel: My Q&A With Retired FBI Undercover Agent Martin Suarez

Counterterrorism Magazine published my interview with former FBI undercover agent Martin Suarez.

You can read the interview via the below pages or the text below: 

Retired FBI special agent Martin Suarez is the author of “Inside the Cartel: How An Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire.” Ian Frisch is his co-author.

Martin Suarez served as an FBI Special Agent for twenty-three years, beginning his career in July 1987 and retiring in October 2011. His first assignment was with the DEA in Miami, where he worked for about a year. He was then assigned to various divisions, including a stint in San Juan from 1991 to 1995, before returning to Miami in 1995. Throughout his career at the FBI, he conducted numerous high-profile investigations involving drug cartels, organized crime, public corruption, murder-for-hire cases, national security, and terrorism. 

In 1990, Suarez attended the undercover school and completed the advanced undercover school in 1998. That same year, he was appointed Southeast Region Backstopping Coordinator in Miami, providing national and international support while working undercover. He also served as an instructor at undercover certification schools and worked as a safeguard assessment counselor. 

Suarez holds the record for the longest continuous period spent undercover and has successfully infiltrated criminal organizations across the United States, Europe, Asia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. His awards include being a six-time recipient of the FBI’s Special Performance Award, a four-time recipient of the Department of Justice’s Outstanding Law Enforcement Officer of the Year Award, and the recipient of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

Martin Suarez retired from the FBI in 2011 and currently lives in South Florida.

Martin was interviewed by Paul Davis. 

IACSP: Why did you write the book after so many years? 

Suarez: After I retired in 2011, numerous colleagues of mine, including fellow undercover agents who had already written their own memoirs, begged me to tell my story. They showered me with praise, saying I wrote the book on the undercover technique, was the only agent in history to have ever infiltrated a Colombian cartel, and helped educate countless other young agents on the covert craft. I always brushed them off, not realizing that my experiences would resonate with an audience. It wasn't until my grandchildren were born, and I began to experience symptoms that would eventually be diagnosed as ALS, that I chose to finally write this book.  

IACSP: I read that you spent 10 years in the U.S. Navy, first as an enlisted man and later as an officer. What did you do in the Navy? 

Suarez: After I became an Officer, I was placed in naval aviation, where I hunted Soviet submarines. From there, I rose the ranks to become a Surface Warfare Officer (SWO). As a SWO, I specialized in large-scale projectiles, including Tomahawk, anti-submarine, terrier, and harpoon missiles. In effect, I was tasked with using the ship as a weapon, all while overseeing—and leading—a crew of sailors.  

IACSP: Why did you leave the Navy and become an FBI Special Agent? 

Suarez: By 1988, I had been in the Navy for a decade, and my two sons had grown from infants to little boys. I wanted to be there for them, and the Navy's long tours kept me away from my family. Beyond that, my father had always valorized FBI agents, and I too wanted to become a federal law enforcement officer, if not to thwart crime than to surely make my father proud. When the FBI first hired me, I replayed in my mind nights long ago when my father and I would sit in front of the TV and watch The FBI with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. "It's the most fantastic law enforcement agency in the world," he told me when I was a child. "They are protecting the entire United States. And you see their logo? It stands for honesty, fidelity, and bravery. That's what it's all about."  

IACSP: How did you come to be an undercover agent and how did you infiltrate a Colombian drug cartel?  

Suarez: I always say that I was in the right place at the right time. It was the late 1980s, and The War on Drugs was in full swing. The FBI was willing to embrace the covert technique, and I emerged as the perfect candidate. Having Navy experience, I could chart a ship and fly a plane. A native of Puerto Rico, I spoke fluent Spanish and carried with me valuable street smarts. Thankfully, the FBI had engaged a cooperating witness as a source, who taught me all of the ins-and-outs of how cartel men behaved. After his tutelage, I easily became "Manny," a smuggler who had the resources and the guts to get the cartel's cocaine from Colombia to Miami.  

IACSP: What cartel did you infiltrate, and what years were you undercover? 

Suarez: During the first six years of my career, from 1988 to 1994, which my memoir covers, I infiltrated The Medellín Cartel and The North Coast Cartel. During that time, however, I did one-off smuggling jobs for The Calí Cartel, and other independent drug lords who wanted my services. Overall, I helped the cartels smuggle over $1 billion worth of cocaine, all of which was seized. I continued to work undercover after 1994, but gradually became a coordinator of covert operations, where I backstopped and made cameos for other agents. I continued doing this, while keeping my undercover legend intact, until I retired in 2011.  

IACSP: How and why did you transition from being a drug smuggler to being a drug cartel money-launderer? 

Suarez: In the early 1990s, I moved back to San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Miami. I wanted my family to be near my aging parents, but the Miami and San Juan Field Offices were happy with my transfer, since Puerto Rico was becoming a hot-bed of cartel activity. I kept smuggling for the cartels, but my case agents began tracking an underground money laundering ring, and we eventually convinced one of the launderers to flip and work alongside me. This was a big break because, by this time, the FBI realized the most important aspect of the cartels' business model wasn't drugs—it was money. And now we had a window into how they sustained their business model.  

IACSP: How would you describe your undercover role as “Manny,” the drug smuggler and money launderer?  

Suarez: Manny was as close to me, Martin, as I could make him. This was best practice, because it was easier for me to be a slightly modified version of myself rather than a persona completely invented from whole cloth. Although I changed my sense of dress and put a bit of swagger in my step, I never lied about being Puerto Rican, and utilized all my technical knowledge from the Navy, which made me more valuable to the cartels because I could do things other smugglers could not.  

IACSP: How did you smuggle the drugs in and how did you launder the cartel's money? 

Suarez: When the cartels hired me, they did so only for very large deliveries—hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of cocaine at a time. Many times, I would arrange a series of ships in the Caribbean, and the cartel would fly a plane overhead in the middle of the night and drop the cocaine from the sky. I would then gather the drugs and bring them back to Miami, the cartel completely unaware that the entire operation was a ruse orchestrated by the FBI. At one point, I also built an airstrip in Puerto Rico, where the cartel could land their plane and do even larger deliveries. As a money launderer, I would meet with drug lords and smugglers and collect their money, and then transfer the cash into cashier's checks, which I gave to the cartel's couriers. The FBI traced all the details, and we were able to unmask their money laundering apparatus.  

IACSP: What happened to the drugs you smuggled into the U.S? 

Suarez: All of the drugs were eventually seized. Nothing ever hit the streets. But we made sure to plan the seizures in such a way as to deflect blame from me, thus keeping my undercover identity intact. It was great: I was never unmasked as a federal agent, no drugs made it into the community, and the smuggling fees the cartel paid me more than supported our operations. In effect, the cartel was funding our cases into them.  

IACSP: Being undercover with cartel criminals is a precarious life. How did you maintain your cover over the years and how did your fellow FBI special agents support you?   

Suarez: I've always felt a little guilty about writing a memoir—"my story," as it were—because all of my deep undercover work was made possible by the team of agents that surrounded me. Without them, my risk profile would've been so high as to render my technique useless; I would've easily been made. But with such a robust support system, I was able to go deeper than any agent had before me, and be confident in taking certain operational and on-the-ground risks, many of which would not be allowed today. And as I went deeper, it became harder for the cartels to find out who I really was. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy that worked to our advantage. At a certain point, the cartels didn't want to believe I was anyone but Manny. By then, they didn't need any convincing.  

IACSP: You write that a Colombian hitman, or “sicario,” attempted to murder you at your Puerto Rican home. How did you survive the murder attempt? 

Suarez: After the indictment for the money laundering case was unsealed, El Toro Negro, the money-boss of The North Coast Cartel, sent a hitman to kill me. I had come back from a morning run, and the sicario ambushed me from the bushes. I lied and told him I was not the owner of my house, and he held me at gunpoint for a few hours, which gave me time to formulate a plan. I needed to either run or fight, but he was smart, and always kept a safe distance from me. When he marched me inside the house, however, I got the opportunity I needed when I opened the door, and I pushed him down the steps. I then was able to run into my house, obtain my service pistol, and chase him off. God was on my side that day.  

IACSP: How and when did the undercover operation end and what were the results of the operation? 

Suarez: The money laundering operation ended in 1994, and produced a 52-person indictment out of The District of Puerto Rico. This included powerful bankers, big-time smugglers, and high-end launderers. Everyone either pleaded guilty or was convicted at trial, and the intelligence gathered in that case formed the foundation of further investigations, one of which eventually led to the dismantling of The North Coast Cartel and the arrest of its leader, Alberto Orlandez-Gamboa, also known at The Snail. Moreover, my investigation revealed The Black Market Peso Exchange, which the cartels used to launder money back to Colombia, and which also became known as the largest and most insidious money laundering apparatus in the world.  

IACSP: What are you doing these days? 

Suarez: These days, I am enjoying retirement by spending time with my family—especially my wife Maria, my two sons (who are also federal agents), my daughters-in-law, and my grandchildren. Beyond that, I am doing my best to keep up with my health, so I have many more years of being able to regale my grandchildren with cinematic stories of how their abuelo was an undercover FBI agent who took down a Colombian drug cartel. In my ways, this book is for them, so my legacy can live on, and decades from now, they can always come back to my memoir and remember what I was able to do for this country and my fellow citizens.  

IACSP: Thank you for speaking to us and thank you for your service. 

Paul Davis, who writes the online Threatcon column, is a longtime contributor to The Journal.