eHub Q&A with Joe Toft

at this point we’re let’s take off the headsets and uh let’s
open it up if anybody has a question there’s a few out there blae I’m not
calling on you but Deacon sure how many languages are you fluent in and how
often would you use those languages in your line zero languages including
English no uh yeah I mean you know English was my second language because I
was born in Bolivia so I came to the states when I was 14 so I’m barely
managing English you know but uh so because I’ve lived in Bolivia for 14 years
and I had an assignment as the agent in charge of the um uh da Madrid office
for four years I was pretty good in Spanish but I’ve lost a lot of my
vocabulary I mean I’m I can hold a conversation but I sometimes have to
search for Words more than I do so in English but let me let me just say I
lived one year in Rome so I picked up some Italian out there I can sometimes
understand a little bit but uh I’ve lost it you know and um and also with IGT
I spent uh the better part of eight months in sou Paulo so I was picking up a
little bit of portug pese but you know I don’t want Portuguese you Joe’s
Spanish was he was he was so good with Spanish that he was often put in those
situations to communicate and there were other agents who didn’t have that
strength in there well one of the um lucky things that happened to me in
Columbia my Deputy the number two guy in the office his Spanish was very good
he was just wasn’t very confident you know working out so it gave me the
opportunity to spend most of my time outside the office doing the fun stuff
while he was doing the paperwork okay we have blae and cat have questions
here I was just gonna ask how did you V out were the trustworthy law
enforcement oh boy that was you know I was disappointed many times people
that I trusted uh after a while I um I started playing games and um someone
that I wasn’t sure about I would give him information that was false and
sometimes that information would come back to me through informance and was
lousy to play games like that but it helped me navigate through the you know
but the people that I trusted and I I mean I had many many cops that I
trusted him with my life those those people my God incredible Heroes
incredible Heroes I mean those guys the courage I mean the circumstance they
were facing up there you know they had to send their kids with cops to the
police to excuse me to with cops to the to their schools the cops would sit
outside the door of the schools you know because they were afraid that their
kids would be kidnapped or killed and this guy still still denied the efforts
of the bad guys you know corrupting them so so I have a tremendous amount of
admiration you know I talk very negatively about corruption in Colombia which
is all over but at the same time I have tremendous tremendous respect for so
many people that uh work that I work with side by side and the very very
difficult uh situations very difficult conditions BL uh my question is the
only they say Legend has it the only woman that alar ever feared was gril de
Blanco is that true and did you have any run or I knew about I knew about
grela but you know grela I don’t think Escobar feared grisela you know grella
was murdered when she went back to Colombia and um but in the realm of things
you know G grela was pretty big in Miami uh but she wasn’t really that big
but she’s been glamorized on on the movie aspect and everything because she
was a woman and she was not as pretty as the actress that’s the truth
Chandler so you talk about obviously guys were targeting Escobar he the you
know the leader of the Ring Of Terror in Colombia the end of the day you kill
Escobar it creates his vacuum and then you just have additional corruption
and these things rise at the end of the day are you just playing a game in
the da of the lesser of two evils or what does at the end of day it sounds
like you’re never going to win and solve the problem so what was the ultimate
goal with some of that when I when I started working narcotics you know I was
very naive I mean I really thought heck man I’m going to make a difference
here I’m going to really you know G to be part of doing away with drug
trafficking um as long as there there’s demand for drugs that’s never going
to happen so I my uh way of justifying my passion for the job or whatever you
want to call it you I I saw the job as trying to sit on top of the garbage
lid and trying to prevent that garbage from overflowing and the Cali cartel
which which took over after escobart you know they’re non-existent now so
what you have in Colombia now you have probably a dozen much smaller
organizations that do not have the power that uh Escobar and the Medan cartel
and the Cali cartel had because those two ran the country I mean literally
Ram the country I mean um 7 5% of the Congress was implicated in DEA files
I’m think about it 75% of the Congressional politicians we have something on
on our files on them uh information you know that was the tied them to the
drug traffickers in some way or other um yeah it’s it’s it’s hard to uh I
mean you know was a season agent I’ve been around for a long time done a lot
of things and everything um but going to Columbia was wow can it be this bad
can it be this corrupt can it be so can these people’s be so powerful you
know they never counted money they would bring in baales of money and they
would weigh the money because every every uh piece of currency up there and
in the bag had to be $20 and they knew if this thing weighed 100 lb it was X
number of dollars more or less you know um yeah and I uh I brought some
pictures that uh I think are going to be incorporated into this thing that
are going to be pretty telling us to you know some of the stuff but yes sir
did was there a problem where the cartels were able to infiltrate the D while
imag trust you know no now there was one agent that worked from me da uh
who’s uh who was a really good Agent really good Agent he had a really good
work he got promoted and went back to Miami as a group supervisor in Miami
and he ran a storefront I don’t know if you know what a storefront is but
basically this they numerous various kinds of storefronts but it basically he
ran an investment company that was created by DEA to launder money from the
drug traffickers and normally a storefront like that you know it’s got a i me
it’s perfectly set up you would never guess that you know everything’s done
perfect and what would happen in the storefront you know the traffickers
would bring in suitcases money um to buy apartment buildings to buy stocks
mutual funds whatever to invest so the sront would collect this and after
running it for two or three years and they’ll have you know maybe $100
million worth of stuff or more they would cease the stuff and arrest
everybody and this agent you know got seduced by the money and he ended up we
ended up arresting him uh and he had concealed something like $700,000 that
he had taken from the traffickers because like I said the traffickers didn’t
really care how much was in the suitcase as long as it weighed so much and so
it was easy for him to steal you know a few thousand here a few thousand
there and he had stole $700,000 which we recovered and he and he his wife was
also an agent he was arrested and he served time he claimed that his wife had
nothing to do but she was you know she was fired too yeah yes um so it’s been
30 years since you worked for da roughly 30 years do you today do you still
does it affect your life still as far as safety um you know people are after
you or you thought people might be well the contracts that were on my life in
Colombia came from Pablo escovar and uh you know he’s dead of course his
son’s alive and you know a couple other guys are alive but they’re not
significant people but uh the thing that I feared when I came back to the
States and for the first for the first three years four years I didn’t go
back to Colombia because I was afraid that the president who I had you know
put on a tough position when I told him you know I told the country that he
had been elected with drug money he had ties with the traffickers with the
Cali cartel and I was always afraid I had a couple of while I was working for
IGT IGT wanted me to goou Columbia a couple of times and I couldn’t go
because I I would call my contacts and intelligence and the police and
everything said hey is it safe for me to come now and they would advise me
against going back because they you know they said they’re still talking
about you what you said about them and blah blah blah and I was not afraid
that I would get killed there but I was afraid that somehow they would put
some drugs in my in my suitcase and arrive in Miami and give him a tip and
here former DEA head of Colombia arrested in Miami with you know some cocaine
or you know that that was my fear eventually I went to Colombia and I’ve been
to Colombia a few times since the first few months I was in the US I was a
little you know careful yes sir for kind of your work there how much did kind
of DEA protocol or policy hold you back in terms you know the beauty about
beauty about uh I had arguably I had the highest profile office in Colombia
because of the fact that that was the mecca of cocaine you know and the two
largest cartels that we were fighting that gave me a lot of I don’t want to
say leeway or whatever you want to call it and um I was not nobody was
telling me from Washington what to do I did whatever the hell I wanted to do
and and um I I was lucky that I didn’t you know get in trouble or you know
but we’re the I mean we were the jewel of GAA because of the what we were
doing out there you know and um the time I was there we ceased got a close I
think I can’t remember the numbers but it was close to 500,000 lounds of
cocaine you know I mean and F I mean all of the offic in the US combined
didn’t come anywhere and even you know close to having ceased that much and
the labs were destroying Labs left and right we were uh yeah I mean it was it
was great I mean yeah they basically as long as I was doing a good job and
you know they left me alone and um I didn’t have to ask permission for
anything except sometimes I needed more money not for me for the operations
yes sir so I wanted to ask you to reconstitute cartel with the of no no the
what happened with the millennian cartel there was a group of uh
paramilitaries that were providing services to the median cartel and uh this
group was created by the Medan cartel to fight the terrorist groups that were
in areas that the Milan cartel was operating the farc and the eln they were
communist groups out there there that were um there was in some areas the man
cartel was in bed with them some areas they were fighting each other so the
Medan cartel created this or this uh paramilitary groups to give them uh to
provide def uh safety or Security in areas that they were they wanted to be
in so they were constantly fighting this paramilitary groups were fighting
the gorillas killing each other when Escobar was killed some of those people
created their own small cartel and they had a lot of you know they had a lot
of knowledge of the trafficking and everything the lab operations and
everything so they became a cartel and as far as I know they’re still
operating today so also can you tell me something about a famous tunnel which
tunnel was tunnel to no no there was no tunnel uh you mean there was you mean
in Mexico there was a tunnel I was thinking about the prison no there was no
tunnel they just walked out so the interesting thing is there are reports of
a tunnel at the prison that Pablo created that he that he used to escape when
they started coming down on him but that is that’s inaccurate there was not a
there was not a tunnel at the remember Escobar it was the easiest thing for
him to escape the prisons was basically surrounded by the military by the
Colombian military the police was not allowed within 2 kilometers of the
prison that was part of the agreement with with the government um when
Escobar walked out of the prison he just walked through a hole in the fence
walk right through the cops I mean not the cops the military people in fact I
uh they even had press people that actually encountered Escobar as he was
escaping and they took pictures of them and so and one of my contacts gave me
some pictures that they actually took us they were walking you know past so
uh yeah there was no tunnel the whole thing I mean smells I mean the whole
thing just smells rotten yeah I’m just curious because I was trying to kind
of timeline you saying you got married as a senior in college and what have
you so how old were you when you actually went to Columbia and did they have
like any protection the reason I decided to go to Columbia was because I got
divorced okay Sor a week before I went to Colombia I got married was a great
question yeah this may be the most fascinating part of the story right no I
um I was divorced and uh and that’s why I could have go to Colombia because
you know I mean I and then I was dating this girl for a little over a year
and um the opportunity to go to Colombia came up so I said I’m going to
Colombia and she said we got to get married and um she had a kid that was
five or six years old and uh kids were not allowed in Colombia so if we got
married she would have to stay unless she wanted to leave her kid with somebody
else you know but um so I the deal was we will get her married after I get
her back or we’ll look into and see if we still want to get married you know
in 3 years you got to wait for me for 3 years you know but uh about a week
before a week week and a half before I left for Columbia we went out to a
nice place for dinner and had too much wine same old story and she and she’s
she’s just balling she’s crying you know and this had there were a lot of
crying episodes before this but she’s just balling and said Jesus you know so
I said okay you set it up we’ll get married so I get married uh I think three
or four days before yeah three days before I left for Columbia wow but uh so
I told Frank I was married 1.1 times because I got divorced before I get back
so I’d never live with her big mistake a vague mistake yeah asked good
question well at that and at that time if you if you were an American working
in Colombia they didn’t allow families they allowed a wife but not the kids
yeah the because of the yeah intimidation no protection set up here like or
concern no no protection here but I I mean I had bodyguards I had bulletproof
cars uh every agent had bulletproof car um my apartment was like a fortress I
mean just like a fortress um yeah so you said you were there for six years uh
I was there for 6 years and 8 months plus was there a moment in time where
you thought to yourself wow I should get out not while I was chasing Escobar
and and I kept asking for more time because I was supposed to be back after 3
years and usually around two years they start reassigning you you know so you
know where your next assignment is going to be be so I kept asking you know
you got to give me more time give you more time and luckily you know the
office was doing really well in in every aspect except getting Escobar so
they kept giving me time giving me time and um uh and I could have stayed it
longer but um in a in a way I wish I would have stayed for Cali because I
would have loved to go after Cali the C cartel that CIA yeah was there I
guess I’m was there information that you Shar well you know I I admire the
CIA the CIA has a really tough job they really do but uh not very forthcoming
at all and we would always find out that they narcotics was not their Forte they’re
supposed to be working the gorillas but somehow or rather we find out through
our informant or the police or that they were kind of doing things that it
was in our jurisdiction but the thing that set the situation between uh D and
CIA was shortly after I got to Colombia been there maybe couple of months
there was an organization government organization which was kind of like a
combination Secret Service FBI CIA in Columbia an intelligence unit it was
very important to the EA and it was run by a uh police general General Masa
so one of my targets to in the area leas was to get General Masa to work with
me closely and this first couple of months remember I’m a little naive I’m
being I’m bouncing off walls because there’s just so much stuff coming in not
knowing what to do and reacting to everything and and my feet are not on the
ground yet so one of my agents had an informant that said that General Masa
was receiving money from Pablo Escobar instead of checking out that
information I share that information with the chief of the CIA and the and
the Ambassador and two or three days later the Ambassador gets this letter
from General Masa saying that you’re new head of DEA you know it’s battle
mouthing me you know saying things like that well I know the Ambassador
didn’t tell him that so the CIA did and so what they were trying to do is
they were trying to screw me with my relationship with with Masa and you know
which was critical for for DEA because they wanted to have Masa old to
themselves so I said turn out a backfire in the CIA because I went to Masa
and apologize and explain hey man I’m you know I’m just trying to find my way
up here I should I screwed up I should have check this information a little
more you know polygraph informant whatever the heck you know we’re going to
do I didn’t do my homework I screwed up and um and how did I asked him how
did you get this information he told me CIA gave me and uh he thanked me for
this and and Moss and I became like this from that point on and he would tell
me everything the CIO was doing so uh and to this day I’m you know I’m still
close to myself the guy is probably 901 years old 92 years old something like
that but you know I’m I’m still in contact with him and those are the
relationships I develop among the the generals and you know and every
Christmas we touch base with each other all other the guys so I still have
those contacts out there I mean they’re all retired but it’s it’s good to
talk to guys that you share some tough times with well that was fascinating
and we can’t we can’t uh thank you enough for spending time with us here
today thank you let’s go eat thank you for listening to the know your ship
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