Narrator: Now America's War on Drugs enters its third decade.
Stratton: He was owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by drug dealers.
Gates: Do you know who is supporting the enemy?
The casual drug user.
Parenti: The militarization begins in Los Angeles.
Woman: Jury deliberations continued today
in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers.
De la Cruz: Daryl Gates created this approach,
and that's what started the riot.
Grim: Mother's little helper, the little pill that was meant
to make the lives of American housewives tolerable.
-Does it look good? -Yeah.
Arnold: We'd been partying like a week straight,
Got FBI. I got DEA.
I said, "Where's AC/DC at?"
Grim: When Kurt Cobain dies,
Bill Clinton even calls it a culture of death.
I experimented with marijuana a time or two,
and I didn't like it.
St. Pierre: The perfect answer became, "I didn't inhale."
De la Cruz: Drugs is big money, and NAFTA was big money.
Parenti: It's not only that more people are going to prison,
but it's that people are staying for longer.
President Clinton: Our great challenge is to take our streets back.
Let us stick with the strategy that's working
and keep the crime rate coming down.
I was in prison when the Berlin Wall fell,
and I remember watching TV every day.
[ Cheers and applause ]
The Cold War was ending,
and there was tremendous pressure on Bush
to try to do something about the drug menace.
Narrator: It's been 18 years since the War on Drugs was declared.
Newly elected president George H.W. Bush
has been in office seven months
when he addresses the nation live on TV.
This is crack cocaine.
It's as innocent-looking as candy.
But it's turning our cities into battle zones.
Narrator: Bush has ordered the invasion of Panama.
It's the first war of the War on Drugs.
Wright: When 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.
[ Engine starts ]
[ Engine revs ]
Narrator: Outside the presidential estate
is Panama's leader...[ Shouts in Spanish ]
Narrator: ...Manuel Noriega.
He has turned his country
into a center of the international drug trade.
Farah: Panama was this meeting ground.
If you pay the right price
to the right person,
pretty much anything can happen.
Narrator: Noriega owes much of his wealth to doing business
with some of the biggest drug lords in the world,
including Pablo Escobar.
Stratton: He was completely corrupt.
Owned lock, stock, and barrel by drug dealers.
When you got the top guy in your pocket,
the country is yours.
[ Men speaking indistinctly ]
Parenti: The U.S. had been intervening
in Central America for decades.
But what was perhaps new and different
about the Panama Invasion
was the -- the role of drugs
in its justification.
Narrator: American troops quickly subdue Noriega's army.
But when they kick in the door of his lavish home,
they're surprised by what they find.
A lot of red women's underwear,
cocaine, machetes for Satanic rituals.
The U.S. intelligence community had had some inkling
he'd become more sort of in his own, little, weird world.
I don't know if they realized
how far off the rails he had gone.
Narrator: President Bush offers a million-dollar reward
for Noriega's capture,
and 24,000 troops fan out across the country
in the largest manhunt in American history.
His picture will be in every post office in town.
That's the way it works.
He's a fugitive drug dealer.
The interesting thing about Noriega's relationship
with the U.S. was,
not only was he involved and in bed
with these big Colombian drug dealers,
he was also a CIA asset,
so he had his relationship with the Bush administration.
Narrator: Noriega's ties to the CIA
go back to the early days of the Cold War.
As a young officer, he provides information
on Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.
In the '80s, Noriega is enlisted
in Reagan's fight against Communism.
Noriega offers to help the CIA
fight its covert Contra war in Nicaragua,
which had become entangled with cocaine trafficking.
[ Shouting in Spanish ]
But there's a-a piece to the story
that -- that's -- that's missing.
Panama was created to be kind of like
the Switzerland of Latin America.
In the 1980s, the CIA
was using these banks to launder money
to pay for secret activities in Central America.
And when General Noriega became the head of Panama,
he became the trustee
of this secret CIA banking system.
But he started inviting Pablo Escobar
and other narco traffickers
to do their banking in Panama.
Man: Good morning, Panama.
Narrator: With American troops closing in,
Noriega flees to the Vatican's embassy,
where he's given sanctuary.
But the U.S. Army surrounds the embassy
and begins blasting rock music 24 hours a day
to drive him out.
[ Rock music plays ]
Soldiers phone in requests
for songs like "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath
and Van Halen's "Panama."
[ Rock guitar playing ]
Undeterred, Noriega takes to the radio
to rally his supporters to battle.
[ Speaking Spanish]
[ Crowd shouting in Spanish ]
Narrator: But Noriega is surrounded by the world's most powerful army
and a mob that wants his head.
When he finally gives up 10 days later, it's agents from the DEA
that cuff him and charge him as a drug trafficker.
Wright: George Bush had to take out our ally
because he violated the sacred trust
of being the leader of Panama.
The U.S. had to go in
and break open those narco trafficker piggy banks,
get the money out,
and give the DEA a road map
to go after these cartels in the early '90s.
Narrator: As one boss is brought down in Panama,
next door, another is about to rise.
Wright: Cocaine is often still being processed in Colombia,
but it wasn't being shipped as frequently
through the traditional routes of Florida.
Things were changing.
Pablo Escobar was on the run.
Others had been eliminated.
One thing that's true about the War on Drugs
is that every time you eliminate one leader,
somebody else gets a promotion.
It's a law of physics almost.
This is what began to happen in Mexico.
Narrator: On 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.
[ Men conversing in Spanish ]
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa,
where locals worship a drug-trafficking saint,
and his favorite uncle is a legendary smuggler.
Amado Carrillo Fuentes was a-a really strong,
strong thinker and functioned more as a C.E.O.
than he ever did as a drug trafficker.
He determined that he could advance his objectives
by dealing directly with the Colombians.
[ Speaks Spanish ]
Narrator: Carrillo is here to make a deal with representatives
of one of Colombia's most powerful cartels,
the Cali Cartel,
controlled by two brothers,
Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela.
Man: We can do more here.
For a decade, the brothers have had a gentleman's agreement
with Pablo Escobar's more powerful Medellín Cartel
to divide up cocaine distribution
in the United States.
But 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.
The Cali Cartel wants to move
more cocaine into the United States.
And the Mexican has a plan.
Amado determined that the Colombians
were always receiving the lion's share,
so he thought he'd be a little bit more sinister.
He said to them,
"For every kilogram that I transship for you,
you pay me in product. You give me one half-kilogram."
So the Colombians thought to themselves, "Hey, no money.
We'll just synthesize more."
But then he started to deluge west-of-the-Mississippi markets
with his own product, gnawing at their market share.
He started flying literally commercial-airline loads
of cocaine into Mexico.
He had his own fleet.
That's when Amado Carrillo Fuentes
became known as Lord of the Skies.
The Mexicans started to dominate
the cocaine market in North America.
Absolute brilliance.
Narrator: With General Noriega behind bars
and Pablo Escobar under increasing pressure,
the Cali and Mexican Cartels are free to take over
and flood the United States with cheap cocaine.
♪♪
[ Gunfire ]
In the early '90s,
the flow of cocaine coming into L.A. via Mexico
has made the city the center of the crack-cocaine epidemic.
[ Gunfire continues ]
Battles over the crack trade
turn the streets into a war zone.
L.A. County sees over 2,500 murders in 1992,
over 7 a day.
[ Gunfire continues ]
De la Cruz: Most people don't understand that even though
the crack epidemic
started in the '80s,
at the height of the crack epidemic,
homicide skyrocketed in 1992.
Everybody's carrying guns.
Smoke some crack cocaine, and you see somebody,
and you perceive that individual
to look at you disrespectfully,
you're gonna kill him.
[ Sirens wailing, police radio chatter ]
Narrator: With Los Angeles flooded with crack cocaine,
the streets are about to explode.
And two of America's most notorious gangs,
the Bloods and Crips,
will find surprising common ground.
O0 C1Narrator: By the early 1990s,
the crack epidemic has leveled inner-city America.
Crime and murder rates are at all-time highs.
Los Angeles has been flooded with crack cocaine
sold by two street gangs,
Bloods...
and Crips.
[ Sirens wailing ]
♪ [ Rapping ] I'm down by law and I Crip my way around
♪ Too much
Both: ♪ Too many Crips, it's too much ♪
Sherrills: Growing up in Watts, we didn't have the more positive
black role models -- the Martins, the Malcolms.
So gangsters, drug dealers --
these became our new role models.
I was one of those young guys
who was a street dealer,
small street dealer,
who sold crack
just for survival purposes.
90% of the community was involved in selling drugs.
We seen, um, the violence, death.
We're surrounded by crack, people being murdered,
and Watts was looking like a third-world country.
Narrator: The crack trade is so dangerous for gang members,
traveling a few blocks outside your turf
could mean a death sentence.
Often, it meant Blood against Blood, Crip against Crip.
In charge of stopping the violence -- Daryl Gates,
L.A.'s hard-as-nails top cop.
We have a war, a shooting war,
not in the Middle East right now.
We have it on the streets of every major city
in this country.
And you know who's feeding and supporting
the enemy?
The casual drug user.
Narrator: Gates creates an elite paramilitary unit
he calls Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums,
or CRASH.
[ Sirens wailing, gunfire ]
Gates launches raids with military names
like Operation Hammer.
[ Man shouts indistinctly ]
In one weekend, nearly 1,500 people
are rounded up and arrested.
Dozens of officers raid apartment buildings,
punching in walls,
even leaving their own graffiti
on the sides of buildings.
[ Explosion ]
[ Indistinct shouting ]
Sherrills: The Los Angeles Police Department up under Daryl Gates,
they was kind of looked at as gang members themselves.
I mean, it's like, man, they was untouchables.
Keep your hands where I can see them, partner.
Man: [ Over radio ] It appears -- appears to be
three male blacks in a vehicle.
It's a white, uh, Hyundai, I believe.
Narrator: But on March 3, 1991,
relations between the LAPD and the citizens they police
take a darker turn.
♪♪
Parenti: It's not just about Rodney King.
It's about this entire regime
of policing that has grown
more and more intense.
The 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.
Narrator: A year after the King beating, while a jury deliberates
the fate of the officers charged,
in South Central L.A., something extraordinary is happening.
A movement is brewing to bring peace to the warring gangs --
a truce between Crips and Bloods.
In order for us to get the respect of law enforcement
it's that we had to respect ourselves first.
Narrator: Inspired by the 1982 Egypt-Israel peace agreement,
Crip O.G. Duade Sherrills calls
a meeting of rival gang leaders.
[ Men shouting indistinctly ]
Sherrills: The Israelis and Arabs --
these people have a relationship in blood.
We had Crips and Bloods fighting each other
who was really just black Americans
fighting over a color.
We started drafting a truce
that fits the scenario of the environment
in which we was comin' from --
no jobs, poor education,
gangs, drugs.
Man: Listen, y'all, we got to take this back. Yo.
Narrator: There had been over 800 gang-related homicides
in L.A. that year alone.
Listen, listen. We need to calm it down.
Are the drugs really that good in y'all neighborhood?
That ain't the kind of money that y'all want to be giving
to y'all's kids. This is our community.
Sherrills: It was difficult and hard.
We talking about gang wars
between all these different rival neighborhoods.
We got people who been shot.
We got people that was in prison
based upon participation in some of these wars,
and didn't nobody believe that it was possible.
Narrator: But after years of warfare
fueled by the crack-cocaine explosion,
the gangs agree to a truce.
-Let's do this. Let's do this. -Shake my hand.
Let's do this, homey. That's right. That's right.
Sherrills: Being that we was some of the most notorious sects
in the city of Los Angeles, if we can unify,
then they can unify.
-But it's a black thing, now. -It's a black thing.
It's a black thing. Crips and Bloods are getting together.
Narrator: As the word spreads, celebrations break out
across South Central.
Talking about hundreds of young men and women
converging on a whole neighborhood
that they was at war with.
Mothers crying. The word is circulating now.
We unifying, getting the opportunity to know one another.
Narrator: But two days later, the celebrations will stop.
Woman: Jury deliberations continued today
in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers
accused of beating motorist Rodney King.
[ Camera shutters clicking ]
Narrator: The city is on edge as it awaits the verdict
in the Rodney King beating.
During the trial, the police testified
that King was high on PCP
and displaying superhuman strength.
I've seen this man shot with a Taser,
um, hit with a baton,
and it was a powerful blow in the head,
and, uh, he was still on his feet.
[ Crowd shouting angrily ]
De la Cruz: The people in the community,
they're watching this, and they're already angry.
And they see themselves
as -- as Rodney King.
"I am Rodney King,
because they've done that to me,"
you know? And there's thousands of people
that that has happened to. And they're watching this,
and they're going, "Man, okay."
Man: We the jury find the defendant Stacey C. Koon
not guilty of the crime of assault
by force likely to produce great bodily injury
and with a deadly weapon.
[ Sirens wailing ]
♪♪
[ Glass shattering ]
[ Man shouting indistinctly ]
Narrator: Over 60 people die
and a billion dollars goes up in flames.
Sherrills: Anytime you have a citizenry base
who historically was segregated,
who was, uh, oppressed,
and who was never given opportunities outside drugs,
then it adds up and it adds up,
then it adds up, then it boils over.
It led to the destruction of their own communities.
Narrator: After the smoke clears, gang leaders speak out,
asking for alternatives to the drug trade.
[ Sirens wailing ]
Bogard: I'm talking about a future for my people,
for me, for all my people.
I'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.
Narrator: The streets of South Central become noticeably safer.
Murder rates plummet.
Did the violence decrease as a reaction to the riots
or because of a now-forgotten truce between gang members?
The reasons are still debated.
Man: Gates must go! Gates must go!
Narrator: But for Daryl Gates, his war on drugs is over.
Gates must go! Gates must go!
Gates: I go out of office without a tinge of anger,
without a tinge of bitterness.
I've had fun. This has been the grandest trip of my life.
I loved every moment of it, and I love every moment
right down to the very last moment.
Thank you very much.[ Applause ]
Parenti: The story of the militarization of American policing
begins in many ways in Los Angeles.
That is the first police department
to start incorporating
the methods of counterinsurgency
from America's foreign wars directly into policing.
The country was given a choice,
and what happened was it doubled down on the War on Drugs.
♪♪
Narrator: In the heartland, a new drug is taking off,
fueled by the sister of a Hollywood star.
Arnold: 'Cause everybody hears the -- the Mexican drug lords.
I mean, that's what you see on TV.
So I never considered myself a drug dealer,
and then I realized I was one.
O0 C1[ Indistinct shouting ]
Narrator: In the early 1990s,
crack cocaine is devastating America's inner cities.
But in the heartland,
another just-as-powerful drug is quietly gaining popularity
and will give rise to an unlikely drug lord.
I grew up in kind of a back-in-time town, I guess.
Leave your doors open.
I have five brothers, one sister.
Yeah, just a regular family, kind of.
[ Chuckles ]
I grew up pretty quick.
Junior high school drinking Mad Dog 20/20
out front of the school.
Back then, black beauties, Christmas trees, pink hearts,
that and -- and pot.
Narrator: Lori Arnold is the sister of Hollywood star Tom Arnold,
at the time, the sister-in-law of Roseanne Barr.
First married at 14, by the time she's 20,
she's living in a riverfront shack with her infant son
and her husband, Floyd,
who runs a motorcycle gang called the Grim Reapers.
Arnold's life changes
when Floyd's brother offers her a line of a new drug.
And you didn't have to snort a lot of it, so you just --
We'd just have a little line to start with.
It burns, and then once you get past that part,
then the feeling starts.
Narrator: First sold as a cure-all for fatigue,
methamphetamine affects the central nervous system,
instantly giving users
a heightened sense of focus and energy.
Adolf Hitler is high on meth for most the war.
Nazi soldiers take it
so they can fight for days without sleep.
Meth first takes hold in the United States in the 1950s,
when it becomes popular with bikers,
sleep-starved truckers,
and adrenaline-junkie surfers.
t America's biggest amphetamine users
are the ones you might not expect.
Announcer: American women often have the deciding voice
in whatever we come to buy.
Grim: It was known for years as "mother's little helper,"
the little pill that was meant to make the boring lives
of American housewives more tolerable.
You would actually see in magazine ads
for those drugs directed at housewives.
Announcer: Red devils. Blue amphetamines.
Grim: U.S. government decided that it was gonna crack down
on the number of pep pills that -- that were being made,
which then created the -- the underground market.
Narrator: Arnold takes a couple of grams to a local bar
and offers some to friends.
We all did lines in the bathroom on the toilet tank.
[ Laughs ]
About a half-hour later,
everybody's just talking and dancing
and having a good time and everything
and wanted more of that stuff.
[ People squealing, talking indistinctly ]
So I just started selling to just make some extra money.
I lived in this $6,000 cabin.
Didn't have heat, didn't have running water.
I started with just a little bit,
an 8 ball -- 3 1/2 grams.
So I'd get $25 for 1/4 gram.
And then I would get about 5 bucks out of that.
Sold it. My brother-in-law got me a 1/4 ounce.
That went same day.
So next time, he brought me 1/4 pound.
Figure 100 bucks a gram,
I had quite a bit of money, you know?
And I stashed it in my wall
because I didn't know where else to put it.
Narrator: Soon, most of her friends are doing meth
and rely on her for their next fix.
It makes you sociable.
It made them something they wanted to be
but didn't know how to be.
Narrator: Arnold buys a bar,
and it soon becomes the local party spot.
But Arnold can't get enough product.
So she looks for an out-of-state connection.
Arnold's crew heads to California
to meet with a Mexican supplier.
They called themselves Mexican Mafia.
Whether they were or not, I don't know.
We got a little bit of vibe that they might be dangerous,
and we always kept a check and took pictures,
um, of the property and what was around it
so we could go get them if we had to.
We didn't want any kind of violence
or anything to happen to our friends
or us as far as it goes. [ Chuckles ]
But I needed them at that time
'cause, you know, they had good dope, and it was cheap.
So it was just strictly business with them.
We keep driving this same car out there.
Well, we don't want to get caught, of course.
So I bought a car dealership, just a small one,
so we'd have a different car each time.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
Yes, ma'am.
The business had picked up so much
that we'd have to go out
to California and Arizona every three days.
So we're like, "Okay, well,
we need to either find somewhere closer to get it
or do it ourselves."
So I get some, uh, books --
science type, like a catalogue -- and I said,
"Okay, well, I can just order a lab right out of here."
So I just order parts, bought a lab.
Narrator: Arnold builds a lab in a trailer
and hires the best chemist she can find.
Hello? Hello?
You in there? You alive in there?
[ Man speaks indistinctly ][ Speaks indistinctly ]
So he'd go up there, three days.
He didn't do his own stuff until after the batch was made,
and he'd shoot it up, because that's the way he could tell.
He said if this is gonna kill him, we didn't want to sell it.
[ Chuckles ]
[ Breathing heavily ]
Whoa, Nelly.
[ Laughs ]
Yeah, it's -- Oh, this is great.
Narrator: The investment in her lab pays off.
Arnold: Instead of paying like $10,000 a pound,
at that point, if I was getting it somewhere else,
it was about $2,000 to make it.
Narrator: At the height of her production, she's bringing in
hundreds of thousands of dollars every month.
Lower-level dealers begin buying Arnold's pure product
and cutting it several times,
flooding entire regions of the Midwest with cheap meth.
Grim: Crystal meth is nothing more, really,
than some really good amphetamine.
And it is a product of backyard cooks
just simply that figured out
they could use pseudoephedrine to cook up meth.
Narrator: Getting your hands on ephedrine or pseudoephedrine
is as easy as buying cold medicine
and crushing up the tablets.
And all of this new profit streaming in
does not go unnoticed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Grim: People understand that a pseudoephedrine precursor
is being used to cook up meth.
Uh, and the pharmaceutical industry realizes
it's selling an awful lot of this stuff.
Narrator: For the next 20 years,
pharmaceutical companies will fight Congress' attempts
to regulate the precursors for crystal meth.
Parenti: Mainstream pharmaceutical companies
play an important role in --
in this whole global production chain.
They don't knowingly sell these amphetamines to drug dealers,
but, I mean, that is the source
that methamphetamine is made from.
Olsen: I did work for a number of large manufacturers
over my 15-year tenure in the industry,
and 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.
Narrator: But Arnold needs industrial amounts of chemicals,
so she uses her used car lot as a front.
I could order any of the chemicals I needed.
So I'd -- I'd get a 55-gallon drum.
It cost me $55,000.
They'd deliver it.
Narrator: The money starts rolling in.
She buys a dirt-track racing car, a 140-acre ranch,
and 50 race horses.
I'm driving around in Ottumwa, Iowa,
with a red Jaguar and diamonds all over my hand
and got all these houses, and 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, you know?
I'm helping the economy.
Narrator: But Federal agents have been tracking
Arnold's California connections,
and they've also been watching her.
We'd been partying like a week straight.
They waited till everybody went to bed.
-FBI! FBI! -FBI!
[ Indistinct shouting ]
Hands where I can see them!
Arnold: I woke up with a guy sitting on top of me.
All I felt was something on my head,
and his gun barrel's resting on my forehead.
Up! Up! Up!
Hands where I can see them! Hands where I can see them!
Looked around. I'm like, "Okay, I got FBI. I got DEA.
I got OPD." I said, "Where's AC/DC at?" you know,
trying to make a, you know, lighter situation
out of the whole thing.
The Feds charged me with 350 pounds of meth
and $10 million in money laundering.
Nobody wants to be a drug dealer, I mean, I don't think.
That's not what your goal is in life.
So I thought, "Everybody gets bond, you know?
So I'll get bonded out. No big deal."
Mnh-mnh. [ Chuckles ]
Nope. I didn't go home for 20 years.
[ Laughs ] It's like --
So, yeah, it was crazy.
And Lori Arnold's story
is sort of a-an exemplar story
of the irony of the War on Drugs.
We're a country that we pride ourselves
on our entrepreneurial spirit.
And 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?"
Well, she was an American.
It unleashed the animal spirits of -- of her capitalism.
And meth, in -- in the short term for her,
had a -- it had a wonderful effect on her life.
And -- And then it destroyed it, of course.
♪♪
Narrator: Eventually, the DEA
will begin a sweeping crackdown on domestic meth producers.
[ Sirens wailing, police radio chatter ]
But new, more powerful forces
are about to move in to the meth business.
Longmire: The drug market in the United States
is constantly changing.
You will see that the Mexican cartels
take over the meth market
in the United States
from what was originally
a domestic operation
and expand their authority over the drug trade.
O0 C1[ Police radio chatter ]
♪♪
Narrator: Deep in the heart of the Santa Monica Mountains,
just north of Los Angeles,
the War on Drugs
is about to find an unlikely victim...
...Donald P. Scott, an eccentric 61-year-old millionaire
who lives on a sprawling 200-acre ranch
he calls Trail's End.
On the morning of October 2, 1992...
Man: Police department!
...heavily armed policemen
smash through Scott's front door.
Scott comes rushing downstairs
with the pistol he keeps for home protection.
[ Gunshots ]
Before he can understand what's happening,
police shoot Scott two times in the chest and arm.
Burch: Yes, this is the Los Angeles County sheriff's department.
Uh, we have a, uh -- We have a gunshot victim here.
Narrator: Scott dies almost immediately.
The police claim Scott was growing marijuana,
and they attempt to take possession
of the dead man's ranch
using a powerful weapon in the War on Drugs' arsenal --
civil asset forfeiture.
The laws allow federal and state authorities
to seize money and property
allegedly associated with a crime.
Civil 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.
Narrator: The Donald Scott case shows the potential dangers
of asset forfeiture laws.
When no evidence of drug activity
is found on the property,
the Ventura County District Attorney's office investigates.
They conclude that one of the motivations
behind the raid was the seizure of Scott's land.
The police don't succeed in seizing the ranch
from Donald Scott's widow.
But the case is just one of a growing trend
in the War on Drugs.
[ Indistinct conversations, police radio chatter ]
Stratton: It's almost a separate reality.
People can get arrested and have their property seized.
They may never be convicted of a crime.
They may actually never even be charged with a crime,
but 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.
Narrator: By 2014, authorities will take in more money
through civil asset forfeiture
than was stolen in all burglaries across the country.
Cash, homes, cars, and entire estates
are taken by authorities
from people they say are involved in drugs.
[ Indistinct shouting ]Police! Down!
Police! Down! Police! Down!
[ Cheers and applause ]
The 1992 presidential campaign.
A young candidate promises a new era in American politics.
-Hiya, lady. -Hi.
-What's your name? -Destiny.
-Destiny! -Destiny. What a wonderful name.
Boy, are we glad to meet you.
We've been looking for you for months.
William Jefferson Clinton.
Raised in rural Arkansas,
Clinton rises to become governor of the state,
then the Democratic Party's breakout star.
I want every person in this hall
and every person in this land
to reach out and join us in a great new adventure.
♪♪
Sherrills: He plays saxophone.
He was more down and more black
than George Bush.
So he was deemed
as the first black president
because he smoked weed
and he played the saxophone.
♪♪
Narrator: But when Clinton's challenged over his alleged marijuana use,
it becomes a defining moment of his career.
I experimented with marijuana a time or two,
and I didn't like it
and didn't inhale and never tried it again.
St. Pierre: If he answered, "Yes, I did use marijuana,"
he lost older Democrats who would have voted for him.
If he said, "No, I didn't use marijuana,"
he lost baby boomers
and younger folks who don't believe him.
So the perfect answer ultimately became, "Yes, I did,
but, no, I didn't inhale."
Clinton, um, was sort of at the head of a parade
of disingenuous baby boomers
about their marijuana use or drug use in general.
Narrator: But Clinton can't escape the drug issue.
The crack epidemic is in full swing,
and the crime rate is nearly the highest in American history,
with over 2 million violent crimes in 1993 alone.
There is a combination
of exaggeration and hype
and also real crisis.
This is when crime rates
actually peak in the United States,
and at the time,
people didn't know that it was the peak, right?
They thought maybe it was gonna go up, up, and up.
A lot of us perceived who Clinton was,
and, you know, it's like the great white hope
for the black community.
...do solemnly swear.
I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear.
Parenti: Bill 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.
For six years,
Washington debated a crime bill without action
while more and more children died
and more and more children became criminals.
But today, at last,
the waiting ends.
[ Applause ]
Narrator: Clinton passes the 1994 Violent Crime Control
and Law Enforcement Act.
It puts 100,000 more cops on the streets
and earmarks billions for new prisons.
There was a choice, and the answer was more drug war.
That's the story of the Clinton drug war.
Stratton: The 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.
Narrator: A new trade agreement will open the doors for Mexican cartels
to send massive amounts of drugs across the border.
And a drug lord will start eliminating the competition
to control the lucrative trade.
[ Gunshots, car alarm blares ]
Narrator: Cancun, one of Mexico's most popular resort towns.
-Hey, mum. -Hi, there.
Had a good time on the beach here.
-Wish you were here. -It's 35 degrees.
Sue's having a good birthday, I think, yeah?
Yeah.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Narrator: But among the tourists
is one of the country's most wanted drug traffickers,
on the run with his family in tow.
[ Tires squeal ]
[ Machine-gun fire ]
[ Tires squeal ]
[ Alarms blaring ]
Assassins have just killed
the Juárez Cartel's Rafael Aguilar Guajardo,
one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords
and left his son critically wounded.
[ Siren wailing ]
When police arrest the killers,
they learn they were hired by one of his own.
Amado Carrillo Fuentes has now taken full control
of the Juárez Cartel.
♪♪
Juárez was really the most important border city
when it came to smuggling drugs.
It's not much to look at, but for drug traffickers,
this is an absolute Shangri-la.
Narrator: Juárez, Mexico, is just on the other side of the border
from El Paso, Texas,
making it the perfect hub for drug trafficking.
The history of drug smuggling
is all about securing trade routes,
from 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,
to Carlos Lehder's Bahamian private island,
a way station for the Medellín Cartel's
cocaine smuggling into Florida.
Now under Carrillo's leadership,
the Juárez Cartel is on the front door of the U.S.
Along the entire border,
of course there will be smaller amounts
that are transported by motorcycles
and any type of vehicle, but the large amounts
in the tractor trailers,
they all move toward a type of choke point.
Juárez is connected to many of the larger byways
that allow for the movement of larger amounts to the North.
Narrator: As Carrillo consolidates his power
in the strategic city of Juárez,
his main suppliers in Cali, Colombia,
launch a dirty war against their rival.
Farah: The Cali Cartel's primary mission in life
is to get rid of Pablo Escobar,
so they form this group called the Pepes,
the People Persecuted By Pablo Escobar.
And they began doing what...
the police hadn't been willing to do
or DEA hadn't been willing to do.
Narrator: Los Pepes torture and kill
Escobar's lawyers and accountants.
They burn his antique car collection,
kill his race horses and their trainers,
and attempt to destroy everything he loves.
And there's accusations they have help.
Farah: The DEA had contact with some of the Pepes.
What they needed was for the DEA and the police
to stand out of the way
and let them do what they wanted to do.
[ Helicopter blades whirring ]
Narrator: Under pressure from Los Pepes
and the U.S. and Colombian governments,
Escobar finally makes a mistake.
♪♪
A traced phone call leads the DEA and the Colombian police
to a quiet Medellín neighborhood.
Police have searched over 15,000 houses looking for Escobar.
This time, they kick down the right door.
Escobar realized that it was pretty much over,
and he couldn't go back to prison,
so his options were to die or to die.
Narrator: He hears the police downstairs and climbs out on the roof.
But he's surrounded.
[ Gunfire ]
And the most famous drug lord in history
goes down for good.
[ Woman sobbing, men shouting indistinctly ]
When Pablo Escobar was finally killed,
thousands of people turned up to his funeral
to pay their respects,
despite the fact that this was a guy
who had terrorized Colombia for years.
He was responsible for the murders of thousands of people.
And yet his public image really was quite strong.
Farah: It was a rainy day,
and there was a little chapel.
[ Crowd chanting "Pablo!" ]
And everybody's pushing in around the chapel,
to the degree they broke all the windows in the chapel.
And at the top of this little knoll
is, uh, Pablo Escobar's mother.
She started yelling, "Those are journalists,
and they're responsible for the death of my son!"
We thought we were just gonna be there
sort of taking notes and observing.
And suddenly, people just turned on us,
and they were spitting at us, kicking us.
And we were trying to get out
as best we could, but it was so slippery.
We kept falling on the -- on the wet grass.
And what I remember is this sort of sense of panic.
These guys were actually gonna kill us.
And the wom-- And the mother just kept screaming.
She just wouldn't stop.
And we're like, "Man, we -- we need to get out of here."
[ Indistinct shouting ]
Narrator: Cocaine will be made and sold in Colombia
long after Escobar's death.
But as Colombian authorities
continue pressuring their cartels,
the power and wealth shifts north to the Mexican drug lords.
And they're about to get some unexpected help
from an American president who claimed he never inhaled.
The 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.
This is our opportunity
to provide an impetus
to freedom and democracy
in Latin America
and create new jobs
for America, as well.
It's a good deal,
and we ought to take it.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
To this day, politicians are still facing blowback
from the NAFTA vote, so Bill Clinton knows
that this is going to be extremely close.
And he orders he-- the DEA
and his drug advisers not to say word one
about what the effect of NAFTA is going to be.
If the drug policy concerns had been able to be aired
at the time, it's quite likely
that -- that NAFTA would have failed.
Narrator: NAFTA passes.
Restrictions on trade are all but eliminated,
and economies on both sides of the border benefit.
But few benefit more than Mexico's drug traffickers.
Conroy: The border is not a line in the sand. It's a zone.
And everything that happens in that zone
is different than what happens outside of it.
The rules are different, the game is different -- everything.
Corruption and the drug trade,
they're all kind of intermixed.
[ Truck horn beeps ]
Narrator: It's the dawn of a new era in the War on Drugs.
At the crossing between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico,
thousands of trucks stream across the border.
It doesn't take long for the cartels to think up ways
to beat the overwhelmed border agents.
When Customs agents make a bust,
sometimes it's all part of the cartels' plan.
De la Cruz: They will go to the individual driver,
and they'll say, "Look,
you're gonna be the pitfall.
But we're gonna take care of your family.
And we're gonna take care of you."
So they lose a small shipment
compared to these other large shipments.
Let's say you have 1,400 trucks,
and let's say that 400 of them are crossing
2 or 3 tons of drugs.
And let's say that the Immigration
stops 10 of the trucks.
That's nothing.
NAFTA was a dream for the drug cartels.
Drugs is big money,
and NAFTA was big money
and continues to be big money.
[ Laughter, indistinct conversations ]
Narrator: And no one benefits more than Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
With NAFTA in effect and Escobar dead,
Carrillo has a clear path to the top of the drug trade.
Esquivel: He knew that money can buy everything in Mexico.
[ Laughter ]
He was like a Robin Hood.
He was nice to everybody, and everybody was nice to him.
That's why he has this big network of people
who was protecting him.
Follis: When DEA started pursuing Amado's wealth,
his ill-gotten gains,
Amado started feeling the pressure.
Amado actually became a victim of his own wealth.
There was too much money.
[ Shouts in Spanish ]
O0 C1[ Music playing, indistinct conversations ]
Narrator: A nightclub in Seattle at the height of grunge rock.
[ Rock music playing ]
A powerful white powder made from a small, bright flower
is the drug of choice.
♪ Break the spell
♪ Make it swell
Man: Are you okay?
Somebody help! Help!
Narrator: Over the past year,
Seattle has seen a huge increase in overdoses,
all from one drug.
Man: Ally! Ally!
[ Gunshot ]
Narrator: When the voice of a generation,
Nirvana's lead singer Kurt Cobain,
kills himself with a shotgun,
high levels of heroin are found in his blood.
Heroin chic takes hold.
The fashion industry helps transform it
from a taboo drug into something cool.
Heroin gains popularity
across the decade's diverse subcultures.
Grim: And this slacker generation is created.
You know, the '90s,
you get the grunge movement out of Seattle,
and also, there's a bit of a '60s revivalism going on.
The Grateful Dead had never stopped touring,
but they're all of a sudden popular among kids again.
Narrator: And it's heroin that contributes to the death
of the Dead's founding father, Jerry Garcia.
Bill Clinton even calls it a culture of death.
This is what happens to your brain after snorting heroin.
Narrator: But few people are aware
that heroin is also fueling a conflict
that's killing thousands half a world away.
[ Man shouts in native language ]
In Afghanistan, a civil war is locked in a bloody stalemate,
and the country is near total collapse.
[ Man shouts in native language ]
[ Gunfire ]
An army of religious fanatics rise from the opium-rich south
to bring order to the chaos.
The Taliban were just simple village folk.
Many of them could barely read.
Narrator: The Taliban are under the command of Mullah Omar.
A top marksman who loses an eye in battle,
his background is shrouded in mystery.
The -- The -- The mythology,
at least, is that some villagers
outside of Kandahar approach Mullah Omar.
They say, "Look, there's a local thug, a bandit
who had been raping some girls and terrorizing villagers."
And so, uh, Mullah Omar gathers up some of his friends,
and they go, they find this guy, and they hang him
from the barrel of a -- of an old, broken-down Soviet tank.
And they begin to shut down these petty, little warlords
one after the other.
Narrator: But Mullah Omar knows the key to a Taliban victory
lies here in Afghanistan's largest cash crop...
...the opium poppy.
Afghanistan is in the heart
of the so-called Golden Crescent,
a region rich in opium poppy cultivation.
But it wasn't always that way.
In the 1950s, the Soviet Union and the United States
are competing in a global Cold War
for power and influence.
Afghanistan was right on the -- the doorstep
of the Soviet empire.
Afghanistan successfully played both sides off
against the middle.
Narrator: President Eisenhower authorizes
one of the largest aid packages in U.S. history.
The goal -- transform Afghanistan into a modern nation
and win its people over to our side.
America finances highways and entire cities.
New dams irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres.
Wheat, fruit, and cotton sprout from the desert.
But farmers soon begin to notice
the newly irrigated, salty soil
is perfect for another, much more profitable crop --
the opium poppy.
The United States has inadvertently created
the perfect conditions for a drug boom
that will one day become entangled with a new war --
a war on terror.
The seeds of terror are planted in 1979.
The Soviet Union has invaded Afghanistan
to prop up a failing Communist government.
And when President Reagan takes office,
Soviet aggression becomes one of his most pressing issues.
Moran: The Reagan administration starts thinking about,
"Okay, well, what can we do about this growing threat?
We -- We can't fight the Soviets head on.
We can back insurgency groups
that, even if they're not aligned with us,
they're at least against our enemies."
The U.S. government realizes, "Whoa.
This is a way
that we can give the Soviets their Vietnam."
Narrator: The CIA begins financing a small force
of religious warriors known as the Mujahideen.
[ Gunfire, explosions ]
There's a-a wave of international volunteers
comes in to support the Mujahideen.
They are actually recruiting centers
for the Mujahideen in Brooklyn.
The Mujahideen had always been asking the Saudis,
who were sending money, said, "Send us a Saudi prince."
Apparently, none of the princes wanted to go,
so they send the next best thing --
one of the sons of the top construction company
in Saudi Arabia.
Narrator: Osama bin Laden is the 17th son
of one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia.
He helps finance a support group of Mujahideen fighters.
He calls it The Base, or Al-Qaeda.
The CIA looks the other direction
as its new Cold War allies
find alternative ways to finance their war.
The Mujahideen start collecting a poppy tax from farmers.
The United States was interested
in undermining the Soviet presence.
There was not as much an emphasis
put on the pursuit of drug traffickers.
In fact, there was none.
Narrator: The Mujahideen send hundreds of tons of raw opium
to heroin labs across the border in Pakistan,
creating a million addicts
and feeding new habits in Europe and beyond.
After a decade of war,
the Soviet Union pulls its troops out...
[ Man speaks Russian ]
...a superpower defeated by a small guerrilla force
financed by the CIA and drugs.
In the wake of the Soviet retreat,
Afghanistan devolves into civil war,
and many former Mujahideen find a new cause --
the Taliban.
[ Gunfire ]
Mullah Omar's Taliban take the capital, Kabul.
And like the Mujahideen before it,
the Taliban use opium to finance their goals.
Parenti: There were edicts that said, "It's not a sin
to sell drugs to nonbelievers,
but you shouldn't do drugs yourself."
So they allow the people to -- to grow poppy, and they tax it.
Narrator: The country is now a religious narco state.
The Taliban begin executing women for adultery
and destroying ancient monuments.
And Mullah Omar welcomes back his old friend
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
The colossally tragic irony
is that our efforts in Afghanistan
to help them defeat the Soviets during the Cold War
laid the groundwork for the war
that we would then have to fight, the War on Terror.
♪♪
Narrator: While Afghanistan
is deteriorating into a narco state...
[ Gunfire ]
...and Mexico is not far behind...
back home, the War on Drugs is starting to see results.
[ Applause ]
Our great challenge is to take our streets back
from crime and gangs and drugs.
In New York City,
murders are down 25%.
In St. Louis, 18%.
In Seattle, 32%.
The Crime Bill of 1994 is critical.
Let us stick with the strategy that's working
and keep the crime rate coming down.
Narrator: After reaching all-time highs in the early '90s,
crime is down across the country.
But the effects of President Clinton's
get-tough policies are just beginning to be felt.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Come on, man. I'm studying.
Narrator: Douglas Lindsay,
a 26-year-old army veteran making his way through college
while working as a mental-health professional at night.
But Lindsay is struggling for money.
To finance his education, he sells pot and crack cocaine.
It'll soon catch up to him.
Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill was one of the most
far-reaching laws in American history,
pushing policies like "three strikes, you're out"
and long, mandatory sentences for drug dealers.
Mandatory minimum sentencing largely removes judges
from the decision-making process.
They become automatons
where they just simply have the amount of weight of the drugs,
the circumstances that they were caught in,
come up with some calculation,
and come up with a multi-decade prison sentence.
Parenti: There's a proliferation of three strikes laws.
The amount of time
that people are now doing
for relatively small amounts
of drugs increases massively.
It's not only that more people are going to prison,
but it's that people are staying for longer.
This reverberates through the communities.
Narrator: A year after his last drug deal...
-Go. Go. -Police! Police!
Narrator: ...Lindsay is arrested by Federal agents.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
And when seven of his friends who are arrested with him
are threatened with long, mandatory sentences,
they agree to cooperate with the government,
testifying that Lindsay was their ringleader.
-Come on over here. -Mandatory minimum sentences
created a velveted glove
over the head of anybody who'd been busted for drugs,
and it incentivized them to take a plea bargain
for decades that they otherwise would --
would not take the chance at trial.
You just simply didn't want to take the chance
of getting 50 or 60 years in jail
when you were supposed to be okay
with settling for 10 years.
♪♪
Narrator: But Lindsay takes the case to trial.
He's convicted of two felony charges
and, at his sentencing hearing, pleads for mercy.
Lindsay: This is my first-time offense, sir.
I've never before been convicted of a crime. Please.
Narrator: Under new mandatory sentencing laws,
Douglas Lindsay faces at least 10 years.
On Christmas Eve 1996,
the judge sentences him...
to life in prison.
Wright: A lot of people who heard Clinton admit
on the campaign trail that he had smoked a joint
expected he would maybe
dismantle aspects of the War on Drugs.
But in fact, the opposite happened.
Starting in the early 1990s
and really accelerating under Clinton,
the War on Drugs became increasingly to be about
how many Americans were being put into prison.
♪♪
The more the U.S. government increased
its targeting of street dealers,
the more dealers they created,
because they created a class of people
who could work in no other industry...
but the drug trade.
And this is how the War on Drugs has perpetuated itself.
O0Narrator: It's almost Halloween night, and three members
of the Hispanic street gang known as F-13
are driving around Huntington Beach
looking for blood.
They think they've just found
a rival gang member's house.
♪♪
-Trick or treat! -Trick or treat!
[ Gunshots, tires squeal ]
[ Screaming ]
No! Erica!
Narrator: They've missed their target.
[ Sobbing ] Help!
The shooter, Jose Munguia,
has killed an innocent 11-year-old girl.
He and his friends have just crossed a line...
set by one of most dangerous gangs in the country.
La Eme, also known as The Mexican Mafia,
a Mexican-American street gang
whose leaders reside in California's prisons.
They rule over numerous Hispanic gangs on the outside
with a strict code of street justice.
Their disciples carry out murders,
kidnappings, and extortion,
but their most lucrative business is drugs.
De la Cruz: The Mexican Mafia, they got a lot of power.
This idea that the Mexican cartels
control street-level drug operations
is not correct.
They control the flow of the drugs,
but they don't control the street-level operations.
The distribution of drugs
are controlled by the street-level gangs
like The Mexican Mafia.
Narrator: September 1993. Elysian Park, Los Angeles.
More than 1,000 gang members
from across Southern California converge.
La Eme has called a meeting
to lay down a series of laws
for the gangs under their control.
The goal -- keep away unwanted attention from the authorities.
Preserve the drug trade at all costs.
Scores should be settled face-to-face.
Those who break the rules will pay.
So they passed a directive
that anybody caught doing drive-bys from then on
was gonna be targeted --
killed or, you know, assaulted.
Primarily killed.
Narrator: It's a week after the little girl's death,
and the shooter, Jose Munguia, is at home.
Two fellow gang members have come to enforce
the Elysian Park rules.
Now, remember, killing to these individuals
is not that big of a deal.
They've already done it.
What's up, homey?[ Gunshots ]
I don't think it was that difficult of a thing
for them to do, to go over there, knock on the door,
and say, "Hey," you know, "Sorry, homeboy."
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and they walk away.
Narrator: Munguia dies almost instantly.
[ Tires screeching ]
[ Siren wailing ]
[ Police radio chatter ]
The killers are arrested later that night.
Inside a California state prison,
the two killers are welcomed into La Eme's fold.
They're now part of a vast criminal enterprise
whose headquarters are behind bars.
The Mexican Mafia is composed of elites
of street gang members --
the cream of the crop, in other words.
They're charismatic.
They're intelligent. They speak well.
They educate themselves on Machiavelli
and, you know, philosophy.
Really exceptional individuals criminally.
And if they're not exceptional individuals
when they get in The Mexican Mafia,
they will be by the time they leave.
Narrator: The 1990s sees an almost 50% increase
in the prison population,
and with it, a new level of sophistication in prison gangs.
Within the prisoner network
was completely controlled
by these gangs
to the point where they buy the guards.
And by corrupting the guards,
they take over control of the prisons.
They're able to get drugs into the prisons.
They're able to deal drugs within the prisons.
Mexican Mafia became unbelievably powerful.
The Feds tried to break that up,
so they would take these guys from these prisons
and spread 'em out all over the country.
But by doing that, all they did
was create regimes within prisons
that had never seen it before.
Narrator: Other race-based gangs take control
of prisons across the country,
including The Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerillas,
and Nuestra Familia, all with their own piece
of a nationwide drug-distribution network.
O0 C1Narrator: Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Lord of the Skies,
has become the richest drug trafficker in the world.
But Carrillo's control over much of Mexico's drug trade
has not gone unnoticed.
Follis: As the pressure was turned up by the Mexicans and DEA,
he became obsessed with his own safety,
to the extent that he was traveling in ambulances
that were conventional on the outside, opulent on the inside.
He had body doubles prancing around Mexico
just to throw others off his trail,
and even to the extent that he decided
to change his physical appearance.
[ Monitor beeping ]
Narrator: Carrillo has taken over an entire floor
of a Mexico City maternity ward.
Follis: A plastic surgeon team traveled to Mexico
and agreed to alter not only his facial features,
but also his rather corpulent body.
Throughout a 10-hour surgery,
30 pounds of fatty tissue were taken from his body,
and his face was altered considerably.
The account goes, from some of those present in the room,
he woke up and was feeling such great pain,
reached for a gun, ordered more pain medication.
And when the doctor was looking at the bore of a handgun,
he decided it'd be best to do what the boss said.
[ Monitor beeping ]
[ Flatline ]
[ Men conversing in Spanish ]
It is said that Amado, the Lord of the Skies,
died of respiratory arrest.
Narrator: The circumstances of his death are so mysterious
that some think he faked it and escaped.
Muchas gracias.
Narrator: But the gory truth soon comes out.
DEA and the Mexican authorities
went to the location, where they found the body.
Narrator: His body is so disfigured that his identity
can only be confirmed by fingerprints and DNA.
Follis: He looked like a Frankenstein monster
because he was all stitched,
and there was so much reconfiguration of his body.
Narrator: It's not the only grisly find made by authorities.
Months later, Mexican workers
discover cement-filled oil drums.
Inside are the badly decayed remains
of two of Carrillo's doctors
and another unidentified person.
Each has been handcuffed and blindfolded,
burned and tortured, their fingernails pulled out.
But the killing has just started.
Now the city of Juárez is up for grabs,
as rival factions battle it out to control the Juárez Cartel.
The city experiences a bloodletting,
as the bodies as traffickers litter the streets.
When Amado die...
[ Cheers and applause ]
Narrator: Three years after Carrillo's death,
a changing of the guard is taking place.
The nation's ruling party is on the edge of collapse.
They've lost the presidential election
for the first time in 70 years.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, also known as the PRI,
had a grip over Mexican politics, Mexican life,
and also the Mexican drug-trafficking trade.
An academic once called it the perfect dictatorship.
As long the cartels kept quiet,
they didn't engage in any killing sprees
or any major disruptions,
the PRI more or less allowed the cartels
to do their own thing.
Narrator: The PRI has left the people in poverty,
the peso nearly worthless,
and the cartels are wary of the new regime's promise
to fight drugs and corruption.
One man, however, is not waiting to find out
if they follow through.
Pacing around the medical bay of Puente Grande Prison
is Joaquín Guzmán Loera,
also known as El Chapo.
El Chapo is one of the leaders
of the Juárez Cartel's rivals, Sinaloa.
A former protégé of Amado Carrillo Fuentes,
he's in prison for the murder of the Cardinal of Guadalajara.
He has a logistical mind-set,
so he was able to figure out how to move product.
And he was ruthless enough to deal with rivals,
because at his level,
you know, they're all apex predators,
and, you know, it's kill or be killed.
And he was able to survive that world.
Narrator: Chapo has been enjoying a privileged life in prison,
paying off his guards.
But with the new government in place,
he's worried he'll be extradited to the U.S.
on trafficking charges.
[ Alarm blaring ]
A riot alarm goes off.
[ Blaring continues ]
Five S.W.A.T. officers storm the medical bay.
They hand Chapo riot gear, a gun, and a mask.
Six officers walk out the front door of the prison.
The brazen escape is a new low
for the Mexican government and the police.
But it's not a surprise.
Jordan: Anybody that thinks that Chapo Guzmán escapes
is not dealing with reality.
Chapo Guzmán can do whatever he wants to do in Mexico.
And there's a reason that Amado Carrillo Fuentes
and Chapo Guzmán, among others, have stated,
"Why would I want to be president of Mexico?
I am more powerful than they are."
And it's a pretty accurate statement.
Narrator: Over the next decade, the cartels will become
more violent, more powerful,
and bring new agony to its country and its neighbors.
But an even more fearsome act of violence
is about to be unleashed on the United States.
And the seeds were planted decades before
on a continent far away.
[ Crowd clamoring in native language ]
Narrator: Suicide bombers have attacked the American embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania.
[ Crowd clamoring in native language ]
224 people die in the twin attacks.
And the blame soon falls on the son of a Saudi billionaire
turned Islamic radical.
Many people have come to think that bin Laden's first attack
on America was 9/11.
In fact, bin Laden's first attack
was the 1998 Nairobi bombing.
[ Crowd clamoring in native language ]
President Clinton: These acts of terrorist violence are abhorrent.
They are inhuman.
We will use all the means at our disposal
to bring those responsible to justice.
Before the al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies
in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam,
Osama bin Laden was forced to flee Sudan,
where he had been operating from.
And he came back
to the one country he knew would welcome him,
which is Afghanistan.
♪♪
Narrator: Pressure builds on Afghanistan's Taliban government
to turn over bin Laden,
as sanctions and famine cripple the nation's economy.
The Taliban had an enormous P.R. problem by this point.
They had blown up the Bamiyan Buddhas.
They were beheading people and chopping off their hands
in football stadiums around the country.
They were under enormous pressure to give up bin Laden,
and the enormous amount of drugs
that were coming out of Afghanistan.
And so by banning farmers from growing poppy,
they could get a P.R. win.
[ Camera shutter clicking ]
Narrator: The Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar,
issues a fatwa on opium.
Production across Afghanistan grinds to a halt
as the Taliban punish farmers who defy them.
Within a year, 65% of the world's opium
has seemingly disappeared.
American and U.N. officials hail the crackdown.
There's one only problem --
It's a scam.
Peters: They came up with a strategy that was very, very clever.
They went to the international community
and said that they were gonna ban farmers from growing opium.
But very quietly, they continued to allow
opium traffickers and heroin producers
to process opium into heroin,
and they continued to allow narcotics to be exported.
It was like an insider trading deal.
They pulled a fast one on the international community.
Narrator: With the drop in supply, Afghan traffickers
sell their surplus opium at a premium,
making millions.
♪♪
Everybody kind of wanted a good news story about Afghanistan.
Everybody wanted something to succeed
and something to seem to be moving in the right direction.
So, again, you have this willingness
by the U.S. government not to look at the problem too closely,
because you might not like what you see.
Narrator: America sends millions in aid,
as they stockpile tons of raw opium in warehouses.
The Bush administration gave them $43 million
to support these drug eradication efforts.
That was in early spring of 2001.
And as everybody knows,
history took quite a different course
later that year.
♪♪
Narrator: Four months later, on a sunny September morning...
...a new war will begin.
Wright: With both the War on Terror and the War on Drugs,
the U.S. government, its leadership,
openly declared wars on these open-ended,
um, enemies and -- and phenomenon.
And -- And people would make light of the fact
that, how do you declare a war on terror?
It's not a country.
It's not a person. It's -- It's an idea.
And, similarly,
how do you declare a war on drugs,
which are used commonly throughout the world?
They're grown everywhere.
And there's a principle at work here.
And it's that, you know, one thing
that really makes a state grow and thrive
is having a war.
Narrator: On the final episode of "America's War On Drugs"...
[ Sirens wailing ]
Wright: 9/11 happened, and the United States
invaded one of the largest opium producers in the world.
President Bush: These terrorists must be pursued, defeated,
and brought to justice.
Parenti: And that effect on the Patriot Act
was that it refueled the War on Drugs.
I helped murder families in Colombia.
Conroy: Mexican cops will go out and carry out a hit,
and then they'll come back couple hours later
and investigate the murder they just committed.
Announcer: Cloaked in many innocent,
it's an invitation to your own murder.[ Screams ]
Stratton: You smoked it, and you suddenly said,
"Wait a minute. This stuff isn't so bad."
-Got some legal weed! -Whoo!
Stratton: They're working with one cartel
to take out another cartel.
It's time to stop the drugs from pouring into our country.
[ Gunfire ]
Olsen: We're all concerned about cocaine and heroin,
but we're legally killing you, and we're getting away with it.