My Washington Times Piece On Fighting The Scourge Of Drugs: El Chapo Rots In Prison, But The War On Drugs Must Go On

The Washington Times published my piece on the scourge of drugs.

The capture, extradition from Mexico, trial and imprisonment of Joaquin Guzman, better known as El Chapo (Shorty in Spanish), was a major blow to the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel. The drug lord will spend the rest of his life in an American Supermax prison.

Those who advocate an end to America’s war on drugs say the effort to combat drugs is pointless and fruitless, and the imprisonment of Guzman will not stop or even slow drug trafficking.Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as the saying goes. Or perhaps not.

Guzman was an extraordinary criminal. He was brutal, inspirational, clever, ruthless, organized, innovative and murderous. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the evidence at his trial showed that he was responsible for importing and distributing more than a million kilograms of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin into the United States.

Guzman used fishing boats, submarines, carbon fiber airplanes, underground tunnels and other methods to bring in the drugs, which were then sold to wholesale criminal distributors in New York, Miami, Atlanta, and other major cities and centers.

Guzman used violence to solidify his power. Witnesses testified that he ordered his hitmen to kidnap, torture and slaughter people who stood in his way, and he performed violent acts personally as well. In addition to spreading poison, Guzman also corrupted government officials.

We can hope that his replacement will be far less efficient.

Facing rampant drug abuse and increasing drug-related crime, President Richard Nixon announced at a press conference on June 17, 1971, that drugs were “public enemy number one.”

“In order to fight and defeat this enemy,” the president said. “It is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”  

And so the war on drugs began.

The ACLU has repeatedly called for an end to the efforts to curb drug trafficking and the use of dangerous narcotics. The ACLU states that the war on drugs has cost more than a trillion dollars over the years and has had little or no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in America.

The ACLU believes drugs should be a health issue rather than a crime. The ACLU believes America should use the money spent on fighting drugs to treat drug addicts. They and others state that the war on drugs is a failure, as after all these years, we have not eliminated drug trafficking, drug dealing and drug using. 

This, to me, would be akin to the idea of legalizing homicide simply because some people continue to get away with murder. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/6/fighting-scourge-drugs/

My Washington Times Review Of 'Drug Warrior: Inside The Hunt For El Chapo And The Rise Of America's Opioid Crisis'

The Washington Times published my review of former DEA special agent Jack Riley's Drug Warrior: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo and the Rise of the Opioid Crisis.

Mexican drug lord Joaqun “El Chapo’ Guzman, once the world’s most wanted man, was convicted of drug trafficking charges last month in New York and he will be sentenced this coming June.

Guzman will perhaps become an inmate of the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado. Guzman, who previously escaped not once, but twice, from Mexican high-security prisons, will have little chance to escape from this prison. He’ll probably spend the rest of his life, 23 hours a day, in a 7-by-12-foot cell.

And so ends the saga of the infamous criminal.

Retired Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent Jack Riley offers a look back at his career and his three-decade long pursuit of Guzman in “Drug Warrior: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo and the Rise of the Opioid Crisis.”

Mr. Riley, the grandson of a tough Chicago cop, tells of his life from a young DEA special agent working undercover on the streets of Chicago to the highest levels in American law enforcement. He served as the special agent in charge (SAC) of the El Paso Field Division and served as the first director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. A Chicago native, he went on to serves as the SAC of the Chicago Field Division and was later promoted to be the DEA’s chief of operations, the third-ranking position in the DEA. His last position was as deputy administrator, the number two spot in the DEA. He retired as the DEA’s highest-ranking special agent in 2016.

The book is mostly about Mr. Riley’s efforts to capture Guzman and smash his Sinaloa drug cartel. He calls Guzman a sociopath and a mass murderer but concedes that he was also a brilliant and innovative CEO of his illegal drug empire. He notes that Guzman recognized the growing abuse of prescription drugs in the United States long before law enforcement officials did. Mr. Riley called Guzman a marketing and logistical genius, a ruthless businessman, a born smuggler, and truly evil. He recalls how Guzman made it very personal by placing a bounty on the DEA boss’ head.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/10/book-review-drug-warrior-by-jack-riley-with-mitch-/ 

Tale of Two Drugs Lords: From Cosa Nostra To Guzmán – It’s Strictly Business

Ed Vulliamy at the Guardian offers a look back at the Sicilian Cosa Nostra boss, Salvatore "Toto" Riina (seen in the above photo on the left), and the Mexican cartel boss Joaguin "El Shorty" Guzman (seen in the above photo on the right).

They both bore the same nickname: “Shorty”. Salvatore Riina, boss of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra from the late 1970s, reportedly until his death in jail in 2017, was known as Totò ‘u Curtu in dialect. And Joaquín Guzmán Loera, convicted last week of being the world’s biggest drug lord and leader of crime’s mightiest syndicate, Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, became famous as “El Chapo”.

Riina was also called La Belva – the beast – for self-explanatory reasons, and Guzmán, El Rapido, for the speed at which he delivered Colombian cocaine, via Mexico, to the US and Europe.

I saw them both stand trial, a quarter of a century apart: the closing phases of the mafia “Maxi trial” in 1992 with Riina convicted in absentia; then Riina’s own case in 1993; and the opening salvos of Guzmán’s trial last November. Two eras separating two hemispheres; same business, same nickname. And how that business model appeared to change, yet remained in many crucial respects the same. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/tale-two-drug-lords-el-chapo-guzman-salvatore-riina-mexico-italy 

Jack Riley, Former DEA Official, Says Sean Penn Belongs In Jail For Meeting With Drug Lord El Chapo

Reed Tuck at the New York Post offers a piece on Jack Riley seen in the below photo), a former DEA official, who states that actor Sean Penn should be in jail for meeting with Joaguin "El Chapo" Guzman (seen together in the above photo), the notorious drug lord now on trial in New York.

As you read this, the world’s most notorious drug dealer, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, is sitting uncomfortably in a 136-square-foot jail cell in lower Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.

But he nearly escaped justice. And it’s all Sean Penn’s fault.

Chapo had run the infamous Sinaloa cartel since the 1980s and was responsible for much of the cocaine, marijuana, meth and heroin flowing into the United States. Both American and Mexican law enforcement had attempted to arrest him, but he proved almost supernaturally slippery. He escaped from Mexican lockups twice and was a fugitive for decades, rarely sleeping in the same place twice.

On Oct. 2, 2015, Mexican marines were finally closing in on the drug lord. They had tracked him to a rugged hilltop compound in La Tuna. Just as the order was about to be given to move in, two people inexplicably arrived: Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo, a Mexican soap opera actress who had praised Chapo online. The two were there ostensibly to speak to Guzman about making a film of his life, but Penn later published an infamously softball interview with the kingpin in Rolling Stone. 

Fearing the actors would be caught in the crossfire, commanders ordered the marines to stand down. The military waited for the celebrities to leave and, instead of going in on foot, chose to attack by helicopter. They lost the element of surprise, and El Chapo escaped again.

“Oh, my God! If I could get my hands on Sean Penn!” Jack Riley, the former No. 2 at the US Drug Enforcement Agency, tells The Post. “The people he put at risk because of that stunt. He should be in jail.”

Riley pushed to have Penn and del Castillo prosecuted for obstruction, but his boss at the DEA and officials at the Department of Justice declined to pursue the case, citing Penn’s protection because he was acting as a journalist. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://nypost.com/2019/02/06/dea-bigwig-who-hunted-el-chapo-sean-penn-should-be-in-jail/  

Cartel Wives: Women Whose Husbands Worked For, Then Brought Down El Chapo Tell Their Story

Pamela K. Browne and Cyd Upson and Foxnews.com offers a piece on a pair of Cartel wives whose drug trafficking husbands have become informants and will soon testify against their former boss, Joaguin “El Chapo” Guzman.   

They once enjoyed a life of ill-gotten luxury, married to identical twins who climbed to the top of the world’s most profitable – and deadly – drug cartel. But these days, Mia and Olivia Flores live in the shadows, wearing disguises and shuttling their children from home to home, always wary someone is coming for them.

Daughters of Chicago police officers, Mia and Olivia married Pedro and Margarito Flores Jr. as the brothers rose from street-level dealers to running Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa drug cartel in the United States.

"They made a lot of money," Mia said in an exclusive, on-camera interview with Fox News Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge. "My husband and brother-in-law were a big asset to him. They knew the U.S. inside and out, they knew the roads, they knew how to maneuver in the U.S. And that's something Chapo and his team didn't know how to do."

The lavish lifestyle came crashing down in 2012, when the twins were each sentenced to 14 years in prison for smuggling 71 tons of cocaine and heroin and $2 billion in cash into the United States. The Flores brothers were the highest level American drug traffickers to be flipped by the Drug Enforcement Agency--DEA, and key to bringing El Chapo to U.S. justice. Key to the prosecution's case, they are expected to testify at his 2018 trial in New York City.

"I would say that they're probably the strongest witnesses in this case," Olivia said in the interview, at which she, like her sister-in-law, wore dark glasses and a wig. "They were the first to ever get El Chapo Guzmán on a recorded conversation. They're U.S. citizens. They speak English. They've trafficked drugs across the U.S."

In the meantime, Olivia and Mia are telling their own story in “CARTEL WIVES: A True Story of Deadly Decisions, Steadfast Love and Bringing Down El Chapo.” The book, which hits stores this week, is Mia and Olivia’s effort to detail the role their husbands played in bringing El Chapo to justice and to tell their own story of survival in the aftermath.

"We do not share our real names,” Olivia told Fox News. “We have to constantly hide. We have to constantly remember our lies. We don't mingle with neighbors. We try to just fly under the radar and try not to get noticed. We're soccer moms. We're on the PTA. We're in car line. We're dressed in sneakers every day. And we're just trying to give our children a normal life."

Although El Chapo, who was captured in his Mexican mountain hideout in January of 2016, after repeated escapes from prison, is now held at the maximum-security wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, Olivia and Mia fear they are "being hunted" by his loyalists.

Their fear is real, according to recently retired Drug Enforcement Administration Deputy Administrator Jack Riley (seen in the above photo in front of a wanted poster of Guzman), who spent more than a decade hunting El Chapo. He said El Chapo is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

"Look, I hate the guy,” Riley said. “When I was on the border some 10 years ago, sluggin' it out with what was going on in Juarez, he put a bounty on my head. I was a little upset about it, because it was only $100,000, but he put a bounty to have someone cut my head off.

  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/06/19/cartel-wives-women-whose-husbands-worked-for-then-brought-down-el-chapo-tell-their-story.html 

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera Faces Charges In New York For Leading A Continuing Criminal Enterprise And Other Drug-Related Charges

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

 Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates today announced that Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, known by various aliases including “El Chapo,” will face charges filed in Brooklyn, New York, following his extradition to the United States from Mexico, alleging that he was operating a continuing criminal enterprise and other drug-related crimes through his leadership of the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the Sinaloa Cartel.

Acting Attorney General Yates was joined in making the announcement by U.S. Attorney Robert L. Capers of the Eastern District of New York; U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida; Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); Executive Associate Director Peter T. Edge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); Assistant Director In Charge William F. Sweeney of the FBI New York Field Office: U.S. Marshal Charles G. Dunne of the Eastern District of New York U.S. Marshals Service and Commissioner of the New York City Police Department James P. O’Neill.

Guzman Loera, 59, arrived in the United States on Jan. 19, and will be arraigned on a 17-count superseding indictment on Jan. 20, before U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in federal court in Brooklyn. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan. Following his extradition to the United States on related charges filed in the Western District of Texas and Southern District of California, the Mexican government approved a request by the United States to proceed with prosecution on the charges filed in the Eastern District of New York on May 11, 2016.

The charges in the indictment filed against Guzman Loera in the Eastern District of New York will be prosecuted jointly by the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Brooklyn and Miami and the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section of the Criminal Division.

The indictment alleges that between January 1989 and December 2014, Guzman Loera led a continuing criminal enterprise responsible for importing into the United States and distributing massive amounts of illegal narcotics and conspiring to murder persons who posed a threat to Guzman Loera’s narcotics enterprise.

Guzman Loera is also charged with using firearms in relation to his drug trafficking and money laundering relating to the bulk smuggling from the United States to Mexico of more than $14 billion in cash proceeds from narcotics sales throughout the United States and Canada. As part of this investigation, nearly 200,000 kilograms of cocaine linked to the Sinaloa Cartel have been seized. The indictment seeks forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits.

“Guzman Loera is the alleged leader of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national criminal enterprise that funneled drugs onto our streets and violence and misery into our communities,” said Acting Attorney General Yates. “We are deeply grateful to the Government of Mexico for their assistance in securing Guzman Loera’s extradition. The Mexican people have suffered greatly at the hands of Guzman Loera and the Sinaloa Cartel; Mexican law enforcement officials have died in the pursuit of him. We will honor their sacrifice and will honor Mexico’s commitment to combat narco-trafficking by pursuing justice in this case.”

“Guzman Loera is accused of using violence, including torture and murder, to maintain an iron-fisted grip on the drug trade across the U.S./Mexico border that invaded our community and others across the country,” said U.S. Attorney Capers. “As a result, Guzman Loera made billions of illicit dollars. This prosecution demonstrates that we will apply all available resources to dismantle the leadership of dangerous drug cartels, wherever they operate, and will not rest until we have done so.”

“Guzman Loera is accused of terrorizing communities all over the world,” said U.S. Attorney Ferrer. “With this prosecution we stand united, with our domestic and foreign partners, in our fight against transnational criminal organizations that profit billions of dollars off of the toxic spread of illicit drugs in our global communities. Today’s announcement demonstrates that international borders do not protect narcotics traffickers from criminal prosecution. We will continue to work together to combat narco-trafficking and the cartels that infect our streets, with the long-arm of the law.”

“This extradition is a tremendous victory for the citizens of Mexico and of the United States,” said DEA Acting Administrator Rosenberg. “Two principles stand out: No one is above the law and we simply do not quit in the pursuit of justice.”

“Through investigations led by our offices in New York and Nogales, Arizona, and the coordination efforts of our attaché in Mexico, Homeland Security Investigations gathered significant evidence that is instrumental in the case against Joaquin Guzman Loera in the United States for his alleged crimes as the head of the Sinaloa Cartel,” said HSI Executive Associate Director Edge. “We are pleased to have worked with our federal law enforcement partners to bring about yesterday’s extradition, and look forward to sharing the evidence gathered in this investigation in the criminal proceedings that will follow.”

“One of the most dangerous and feared drug kingpins will now be held accountable for his alleged crimes in the United States after decades of eluding law enforcement,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Sweeney. “After years of gathering evidence in multiple investigations, the FBI and our law enforcement partners will do everything we can to bring El Chapo to justice.”

“The U.S. Marshals Service will undertake this mission with the same sense of duty that we have undertaken previous missions for the last 228 years,” said U.S. Marshal Dunne. “We will preserve the integrity of the judicial process. We will protect the members of the Eastern District of New York family. We will secure this individual in a humane manner and we will bring him to court on time.”

As detailed in the superseding indictment and other court filings, Guzman Loera and Ismael Zambada Garcia, as leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, conspired to import more than 200 metric tons of cocaine into the United States. The Sinaloa Cartel shared drug transportation routes and obtained drugs from various Colombian drug trafficking organizations, in particular, the Colombian Norte del Valle Cartel, the Don Lucho Organization, and the Cifuentes-Villa Organization. The cocaine was transported from Colombia via planes, boats, and submarines into ports the enterprise controlled in Southern Mexico and other locations throughout Central America. From there, it was shipped through Mexico to distribution hubs in the United States.

As one of the principal leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, Guzman Loera allegedly also oversaw the cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana smuggling activities by the Sinaloa Cartel to wholesale distributors in Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, New York, as well as in various locations in Arizona, Los Angeles and elsewhere. The billions of dollars generated from drug sales in the United States were then clandestinely transported back to Mexico.

To evade law enforcement and protect the enterprise’s narcotics distribution activities, Guzman Loera and the Sinaloa Cartel allegedly employed various means including the use of “sicarios,” or hit men, who carried out hundreds of acts of violence in Mexico, including murder, to collect drug debts, silence potential witnesses, and prevent public officials from taking action against the cartel. To intimidate and eliminate his rivals, during the Sinaloa Cartel’s internecine war for territory with the Juarez Cartel from approximately 2007 through 2011, Guzman Loera directed these assassins to kill thousands of drug trafficking competitors, during which many of his victims were beheaded.

The government’s case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrea Goldbarg, Hiral Mehta, Patricia Notopoulos, Gina Parlovecchio and Michael Robotti from the Eastern District of New York; Assistant U.S. Attorneys Adam Fels, Lynn Kirkpatrick and Kurt Lunkenheimer from the Southern District of Florida; and Trial Attorneys Amanda Liskamm, Anthony Nardozzi and Michael Lang of the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section.

The case was investigated by the DEA, ICE and the FBI, in cooperation with Mexican and Colombian law enforcement authorities. Substantial assistance was provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the Northern District of Illinois, the Western District of Texas, the Southern District of New York, the Southern District of California, and the District of New Hampshire. The Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs also provided assistance in bringing Guzman Loera to the United States to face charges. The investigative efforts in this case were coordinated with the Department of Justice’s Special Operations Division, comprising agents, analysts, and attorneys from the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, DEA, FBI, ICE, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, and the New York State Police.

The United States would like to extend its appreciation to the Government of Mexico and, in particular, President Enrique Peña Nieto, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray Caso and Attorney General Raul Cervantes Andrade for their assistance in this case.

This case is also the result of the ongoing efforts by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) a partnership that brings together the combined expertise and unique abilities of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The principal mission of the OCDETF program is to identify, disrupt, dismantle and prosecute high level members of drug trafficking, weapons trafficking and money laundering organizations and enterprises.

An indictment is a formal charging document notifying the defendant of the charges. All persons charged in an indictment are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Guzman faces a sentence of mandatory life imprisonment, if convicted of the continuing criminal enterprise charge, and a maximum sentence of life on the remaining charges.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera Extradited To United States

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, known by various aliases including “El Chapo,” has been extradited and is en route to the United States to face criminal charges in connection with his leadership of the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the “Sinaloa Cartel.” 

Guzman Loera is charged in six separate indictments throughout the United States.  

The Justice Department extends its gratitude to the Government of Mexico for their extensive cooperation and assistance in securing the extradition of Guzman Loera to the United States.

Additional details regarding the time and place of Guzman Loera’s initial presentation in court are forthcoming.