120. See Decker and Chapman, Drug Smugglers, 70, 75–78.
121. “En firme causa contra buzos por narcotráfico,” LN (CR), 29 October 1992, 12A.
122. See “Cien lanchas capturadas se desperdician por líos legales,” LN (CR), 13 August 2007, 14A.
123. “DEA se reúne con empresarios de Zona Libre,” LP (PA), 13 January 1994, 3A; CIA, Allegations of Connections, 7; and “Region Defines Maritime Drug-Prevention Plan,” TT (CR), 25 June 2004, 13.
124. As former DEA agent Michael Garland testified, cocaine headed to Europe would not ordinarily be sent overland into northern Central America. United States v. Martinez, 476 F.3d at 969.
125. Aguilera Peralta, “Fighting the Dragon,” 221.
126. Precisely when traffickers first used these schemes is often difficult to determine, because the police discovering a new smuggling method often lags behind its first use by months or years. Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine, 335.
127. See Abrams, “Drug Wars,” 79; “Gigantesco decomiso de cocaína en España,” LN (CR), 25 April 1988, 22A; and “Armadillos rellenos de marijuana,” LP (HO), 20 June 1989, 20.
128. “One of the bags in a big shipment leaked and killed all the fish, or we wouldn’t have discovered it,” DEA Special Agent Jack Hook said. “Who knows how much moved that way before we caught it?” “The Mexico Connection,” LAT (US), 13 April 1989, 1. See also Zaitch, Trafficking Cocaine, 139n7.
129. See “Incautan otro cargamento con ocho millones de dólares,” LP (PA), 7 March 1992, 1A; “Costa Rica ligada al blanqueo de narcodólares,” LN (CR), 2 August 1994, 10A; “‘Somos inocentes,’ dicen tripulantes de avioneta,” LP (HO), 16 May 1992, 5; “Cerca de L. 100 millones en coca habría enviado a EUA, ex militar,” LP (HO), 12 September 1992, 19; “Banda trasegó 550 kilos de cocaína,” LN (CR), 19 July 1994, 10A; United States v. Bristol, 964 F.2d 1088; and “Descubren otra forma de transportar drogas,” LP (PA), 18 January 2004, 9A.
130. See “Decomisan cadáver cargado de coca,” LP (HO), 16 November 1992, 50, and “Cae cargamento de heroína líquida,” LN (CR), 3 February 1995, 10A.
131. “Best Technology.”
132. Zabludoff, “Colombian Narcotics Organizations,” 23.
133. “Stemming the Drug Flow,” 17.
134. Shannon, Desperados, 420–21.
135. Because a kilo of cocaine, costing about two thousand dollars per kilo in Colombia, might be sold wholesale in the United States for fifteen thousand dollars per kilo, even small smugglers enjoyed extremely high profit margins. Thoumi, Political Economy, 150n27.
136. See “Policía confirma reunión de narcotraficantes aquí,” LN (CR), 25 December 1985, 10A, and Levine, Big White Lie, 227, 249.
137. See Duzán, Death Beat, 110.
138. See Lee, “Colombia’s Cocaine Syndicates,” 7–8, and Zabludoff, “Colombian Narcotics Organizations,” 27–37.
139. Lee, “Transnational Organized Crime,” 2.
140. For more on this mindset, see Mazur, Infiltrator, 45. The more important the cartel managerial position, the more likely is the individual to be related to a kingpin by blood or marriage or will “at least have [family] roots in the region a capo comes from.” Chepesiuk, Hard Target, 146.
141. U.S. Senate, Law Enforcement: Report, 30.
142. Shannon, Desperados, 106, 346, and Kenney, From Pablo to Osama, 88.
143. According to testimony by Carlos Lehder Rivas, after joining the Muerte a Secuestradores organization to counter the threat of left-wing hostage taking, he and nine other Medellín traffickers grew to cooperate closely: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez, Gustavo Gaviria, José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, Rafael Cardona Salazar, Pablo Correa Arroyave, Alonso Cárdenas, and Rodrigo Murillo. “Lehder confirma relación de Noriega con el cartel,” LP (PA), 20 November 1991, 1A.
144. See INCSR (1987), 91; Lee, “Transnational Organized Crime,” 18; Thoumi, Political Economy, 142, 145; Gugliotta and Leen, Kings of Cocaine, 95.
145. See Lee, “Colombia’s Cocaine Syndicates,” 5, and Clawson and Lee, Andean Cocaine Industry, 91–122. For the joint efforts by Medellín and Cali traffickers to eliminate such kidnapping, see Mermelstein, Man, 123; Gugliotta and Leen, Kings of Cocaine, 92; and Shannon, Desperados, 104–5.
146. See the Horn Statement in U.S. Senate, Drug Cartels, 37, and Castillo, Jinetes de la cocaína, 115.
147. Chepesiuk, Drug Lords, 63–64.
148. For more on Lehder, see generally Kirkpatrick, Turning the Tide, and Lee, “Colombia’s Cocaine Syndicates,” 9–10.
149. DEA officials made this point in a December 1992 interview. Thoumi, “Illegal Drug Industry,” 134, 138n30.
150. “Sicario asesina a jefe del cartel de Cali,” LP (PA), 7 November 1998, 13.
151. Bowden, Killing Pablo, 269. For allegations that Los Pepes was using U.S. government intelligence information funneled through the Colombian Army, see pages 196–98, 217, 270. For skepticism regarding the extent to which the U.S. government was knowingly involved, see “The Fugitive,” NYT (US), 17 June 2001, 18.
152. Decker and Chapman,
