Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy,
Speaker 1: and today we have an episode that I have wanted
Speaker 1: to do almost since this podcast started. It is a
Speaker 1: very unlikely and relatively unknown story about the US Coast Guard,
Speaker 1: and many of you would probably be surprised to hear
Speaker 1: that in the nineteen nineties the Coast Guard was down
Speaker 1: in Central America and South America conducting operations that you
Speaker 1: would normally associate with special forces going down there and
Speaker 1: training local units and accompanying them out into the jungles
Speaker 1: and destroying drug labs. Giuseppe Weller, our guest today, was
Speaker 1: one of those individuals assigned to what was called the DAT,
Speaker 1: the Drug Interdiction Assist Team. They worked hand in glove
Speaker 1: with the DEA and other agencies. The program went on,
Speaker 1: you know, through the late eighties into I guess the
Speaker 1: mid to late nineteen nineties. But we'll get into the
Speaker 1: whole history of it. But I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: a fascinating story and I think more people need to
Speaker 1: know about it. So I appreciate you coming on the
Speaker 1: show today.
Speaker 2: Thank you glad to be here.
Speaker 1: So if you could tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your own kind of upbringing and how that sort of
Speaker 1: took you towards eventually the Coast Guard.
Speaker 3: So I was originally born in Italy.
Speaker 2: My father was a US Army staff sergeant, so met
Speaker 2: my mother there. I have two other brothers, So I
Speaker 2: spent fourteen years between Germany and Italy on an American basis.
Speaker 2: And then, you know, it's a little staff story. My father,
Speaker 2: you know, Vietnam veteran, got in trouble in the army,
Speaker 2: so they separated, my mom separated, and the only thing
Speaker 2: that the Army did was send us back to the
Speaker 2: United States. So I was never back in Italy. I
Speaker 2: was pretty much, you know, a soccer player back at
Speaker 2: those days. So when I came to the United States,
Speaker 2: we bounced around from Maryland to d c. And Virginia,
Speaker 2: and I was going through high schools and the only
Speaker 2: way back to Italy was to try to get into
Speaker 2: like the military to go back.
Speaker 3: And that's what I was trying to do, is to
Speaker 3: go back home.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was seventeen then, and then my
Speaker 2: you know, my mother was like, no, no, Army, you
Speaker 2: have got to stay in you know, something else. And
Speaker 2: I remember going down to the recruiter for the Air Force.
Speaker 2: My brother was in the Air Force, my other one.
Speaker 2: So I didn't like to recruiting side of it, you know.
Speaker 2: I wanted him to give me something like I was
Speaker 2: going to be on shore patrol doing some kind of
Speaker 2: police work. He wouldn't guarantee. And so when I went
Speaker 2: back home that day, my mom was like, hey, the
Speaker 2: Coast Guard called. And so that's what got me to
Speaker 2: the Coast Guard. So I went to go see the
Speaker 2: recruiter down in Alexandria, Virginia, and I spent a few
Speaker 2: days down there, and then I realized, you know what
Speaker 2: they did, not just Coast Guard. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a bunch of drug war pictures that the recruiter had
Speaker 2: on his you know, on his on his on his
Speaker 2: board and stuff. So that's what started everything. And then
Speaker 2: you know, I just I enlisted. I forget what they
Speaker 2: called it, but I enlisted before I came out of
Speaker 2: high school. So in January. I enlisted in January, my
Speaker 2: senior year. I was only seventeen. And then once I
Speaker 2: left high school, I went to Cape manew Jersey to
Speaker 2: my recruiting there and I got my first station down
Speaker 2: in Key West from nineteen eighty six to nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: I was on a service effects ship, which was a hydrofoil. Basically,
Speaker 2: there was three of them down there at the Petro
Speaker 2: Sheerwater and the Seahawk. So once I got down there,
Speaker 2: that's where my law enforcement piece started to come together,
Speaker 2: and you know, I started to experience how law enforcement
Speaker 2: worked in the maritime side of things. And you know,
Speaker 2: I was E two, became an E three there and
Speaker 2: then I struck my boast inmate, you know rating, and
Speaker 2: I was asked to stay one more year from the
Speaker 2: billet officer if I could help out because they have
Speaker 2: nobody to come in at an E four. And I
Speaker 2: did that, and that's how things started to turn around.
Speaker 2: In my last year. My commanding officer was Bickham was
Speaker 2: his last name. He was a law enforcement detachment team
Speaker 2: captain for the lead that's down in Miami, and he
Speaker 2: had asked me, you know, if I wanted to stay
Speaker 2: in law enforcement, he could get me to a unit
Speaker 2: that was very special in the Coast Guard and it
Speaker 2: was unheard of. The only problem was you needed to
Speaker 2: be an E five and above and I was only
Speaker 2: an E four. So the billet officers basically gave me
Speaker 2: a guarantee that if I did one year for him
Speaker 2: in Key West, he would send me there without their
Speaker 2: knowledge and that would be my orders.
Speaker 3: So that's how it all worked out.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen ninety, I basically flew into Portsmouth, Virginia.
Speaker 3: That's where they were stationed at.
Speaker 2: They had they had an office building away from the
Speaker 2: District five headquarters in Portsmouth, so it was on top
Speaker 2: of a bank, so they were segregated there. We still
Speaker 2: wore uniforms, but I showed up there basically, and that's
Speaker 2: how it all started. So when I walked in the
Speaker 2: office as an E four, my commanding officer, Imhoff, which
Speaker 2: his name was like looking at me, kind of strange,
Speaker 2: and my orders were in place, and that's how it started.
Speaker 2: So they ad he had to take me in and
Speaker 2: we started going from there.
Speaker 1: So before we get into the sort of like Coastguard
Speaker 1: special ops, if you will, could you tell our audience
Speaker 1: a little bit about the more like historic normal role
Speaker 1: of the Coast Guard and what their job is, what
Speaker 1: your job was, so that they can kind of understand
Speaker 1: how different and unique this specific program was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so basically the Coast Guard, you know, you go
Speaker 2: out there search and rescue with the primary missions. You know,
Speaker 2: you have small stations all over the United States and
Speaker 2: abroad you have some like in Italy, all streets you
Speaker 2: have those times, and you have they do a lot
Speaker 2: of navigation buoy tending, so all the navlites and in
Speaker 2: the lakes and Michigan around you know, the borders of
Speaker 2: the United States. They patrol a small side of the
Speaker 2: United States. They have small boats to you know, ships
Speaker 2: are about three hundred and seventy five feet long.
Speaker 3: You can be on a cutter for a while.
Speaker 2: But you know, they have all kinds of ratings, mechanics
Speaker 2: and bosn's mates and you know, all kinds of different
Speaker 2: job aspects of it. But your primary missions is search
Speaker 2: and rescue. And plus they have a bonics they have
Speaker 2: you know, they have people who have diving techniques and
Speaker 2: all these little pieces. And your basic job is search
Speaker 2: and rescue and buoy tending or navigation. And that's kind
Speaker 2: of like the two little primary areas you're into and
Speaker 2: that's what you do pretty much for your career. And
Speaker 2: you kind of pick and choose your routes what you
Speaker 2: want to do, what you're rating is, and you kind
Speaker 2: of grow yourself through you know, through rank all the
Speaker 2: way through.
Speaker 3: So you know, I always wanted to stay in the
Speaker 3: law enforcement mission.
Speaker 2: You know, you always tasked to do some law enforcement
Speaker 2: and some some search and rescue and some other things
Speaker 2: that are required.
Speaker 3: But you basically a search and rescue kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Did the Coast Guard or do they have a sort
Speaker 1: of mission of like border security so to speak, that
Speaker 1: they are kind of like protecting America, you know, are
Speaker 1: our East and West coast and have like that sort
Speaker 1: of interdiction mission also.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we do a lot of maritime interdiction.
Speaker 2: It could be human trafficking, you know, immigrants coming over.
Speaker 2: If you do that. You know, we're small and I
Speaker 2: think if I remember when I was in the academy,
Speaker 2: they're a boot camp. I think we're a thirty six
Speaker 2: thousand total at the time in the eighties, and I
Speaker 2: think the New York Police Department was like thirty eight thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so a lot smaller. So we kind of try to
Speaker 2: do those tasks. And you know, we have a lot
Speaker 2: of mileage the mileage around the United States to cover,
Speaker 2: but we also have you know places abroad that we
Speaker 2: go also in other places, so we're very like small
Speaker 2: when it comes to it, kind.
Speaker 3: Of like, you know, not in maritime, it's not so elite.
Speaker 2: Nowadays it is because it has changed, But in those days,
Speaker 2: your primary admission was always search and rescue, and then
Speaker 2: law enforcement, you know, assisting in the immigration work that
Speaker 2: was just alwa secondary, but search and rescue was always
Speaker 2: the first primary.
Speaker 1: And so when you walked through the door as an
Speaker 1: e for to this highly specialized unit, kind of secretive
Speaker 1: unit in the Coast Guard, what was your conception of
Speaker 1: what they did.
Speaker 2: I had no idea, zero I had when I got
Speaker 2: the orders to go. I remember my commanding officers basically saying, hey,
Speaker 2: you're going to have fun, and I had no idea
Speaker 2: where going to get into. I didn't know what I
Speaker 2: was doing. I wasn't like, you know, one of those
Speaker 2: in the Coast Guard. Basically, you know, you're not into
Speaker 2: this elite mode where you're always training every day, you're
Speaker 2: in the gymnasium, you're doing this, you're doing that, you're
Speaker 2: on the range left and right. We did small these qualifications,
Speaker 2: We did some small things, but nothing to that scale.
Speaker 2: So I had no idea what I was walking into
Speaker 2: except I go to this unit and you're going to
Speaker 2: figure it out then.
Speaker 1: And what did you learn when you got your in brief.
Speaker 2: I was, first of all, I wasn't in good shape.
Speaker 2: That was my biggest thing. I was like, Wow, I
Speaker 2: got to get in shape, because once I got there,
Speaker 2: I started to learn about who was there. It had
Speaker 2: been in place since nineteen eighty eight, basically when they
Speaker 2: put the first guys in place. And then when I
Speaker 2: got into there, my basic instruction was, Hey, you got
Speaker 2: to get ready for Ranger School. This is what we're doing.
Speaker 2: Here's what we helped the DEA. We're going to go
Speaker 2: to South America. This is what we do down there,
Speaker 2: your assists, all the boating mechanics that we had to
Speaker 2: figure out.
Speaker 3: The instructions is also to the host countries.
Speaker 2: So but the basic thing was to you need to
Speaker 2: qualify yourself through Ranger School and other programs that we
Speaker 2: have to make yourself that we can get down there
Speaker 2: together the safe And then I recognize real quick, like
Speaker 2: this is real and you know a little nervous about
Speaker 2: going to Ranger School.
Speaker 1: Obviously I want to ask you about that for sure,
Speaker 1: But also I guess maybe we should take a second
Speaker 1: to explain to folks why was the Coast Guard doing
Speaker 1: this in the first place, because, as most of us understand, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the DEA, they have the counter drug mission,
Speaker 1: makes sense, you have special forces that goes down there
Speaker 1: and they'll train the local military. Okay, got it. The
Speaker 1: Coast Guard, you know, the search and rescue mission, the
Speaker 1: sort of interdiction on our coastlines. That's one thing. But
Speaker 1: now we're talking about you guys. I mean, primarily you
Speaker 1: were in a it sounds like the landlocked country of Bolivia.
Speaker 1: So I mean it's very interesting, like how did the
Speaker 1: Coast Guard end up down there doing this?
Speaker 2: So for my knowledge that I knew from before, basically
Speaker 2: what happened was they used to have the US military
Speaker 2: down there, so doing kind of like some kind of
Speaker 2: narcotics enforcement down Then they figured out that, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: we can't really do that in host countries like an
Speaker 2: after war.
Speaker 3: You can't be down there doing some of those missions.
Speaker 2: So at the time that the Coast Guard was with
Speaker 2: the Department of Transportation, so it wasn't the Department of Defense.
Speaker 2: So that was one of the pieces to get DOT in.
Speaker 2: And then also they realized the DA was like, we
Speaker 2: have a ton of rivers down here and we don't
Speaker 2: have riverine expertise, so they needed a.
Speaker 3: Bunch of guys to show off basically that had like small.
Speaker 2: Boat knowledge of how to run boats, repair boats, navigate
Speaker 2: and help out with you know, taking a team from
Speaker 2: one point to another point in those riverine waters. And
Speaker 2: there was no mapping system down there, so you're kind
Speaker 2: of in the middle of the Jungles and the Amazon basically, and.
Speaker 3: That's how it all pulled out.
Speaker 2: So once they got the dot in there, which is
Speaker 2: the US Coast Guard, then then it was easier to
Speaker 2: facilitate the mission to help out, and DA had requested that.
Speaker 2: So once it all way through headquarters and they figured
Speaker 2: things out, and our admiral at the time was Admiral Yost,
Speaker 2: he put things together to assist and I don't remember
Speaker 2: what the unit looked like when it first started, but
Speaker 2: I think he grew to about twenty to twenty two
Speaker 2: total staff between some officers and the enlisted. So and
Speaker 2: then they put us together to where we came together,
Speaker 2: and they had enough different expertises, you know, from mechanics
Speaker 2: to bosn's mates, to gunners mates, to people like that
Speaker 2: that can navigate certain things. And then some officers in
Speaker 2: place to you know, take the team down as you know,
Speaker 2: commanding officer, they put it all together and they figured
Speaker 2: things out, who would deploy went and where after you
Speaker 2: passed these courses basically.
Speaker 1: And the commandant you mentioned, the commandant of the Coast Guard, Yost,
Speaker 1: he had a special ops background and so he was
Speaker 1: very like like when he got a sense that this
Speaker 1: could be a Coast Guard mission, he was all about
Speaker 1: it wasn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. You couldn't have a better support
Speaker 2: system than that comment on sitting in there running that show.
Speaker 3: And you know, just to realize how.
Speaker 2: Far up the chaining went, all the way up to
Speaker 2: Washington like where we were at in this unit.
Speaker 3: It was very special.
Speaker 1: And so the the DEA is already down there. The
Speaker 1: early operation was blast Furnace and then the next one
Speaker 1: was snow cap and so they're down there doing their
Speaker 1: thing with the host nation partners and that that interfaces
Speaker 1: with the Coast Guard. Well, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the training pipeline that you went through. You're a
Speaker 1: young Coast e four all of a sudden going through
Speaker 1: all this tactical training, you know, qualifying on.
Speaker 2: M sixteen at that time, we also had the old
Speaker 2: colts and switching things out to uh we went into
Speaker 2: the baretta and the glock. So when we went to
Speaker 2: Ranger School, everything was brand new. My my biggest thing
Speaker 2: was I was in shape. I didn't know, you know,
Speaker 2: and I was the youngest, so I believe I was
Speaker 2: even twenty one, twenty two, So when I walked into
Speaker 2: the unit, I was the youngest one there. Obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: it was pretty big to me because I recognized real quick, like, hey,
Speaker 2: you have a lot of mature people down here that
Speaker 2: know what they're doing. And the risk was different. You know,
Speaker 2: as a young person you don't have the risks so
Speaker 2: high in your head. So you get older, you know
Speaker 2: the risk is there, you see it more often. So
Speaker 2: the Ranger School was the biggest thing that that was
Speaker 2: the biggest hurdles. I knew I needed to go through
Speaker 2: that and pass that because they had two different things.
Speaker 2: So if you arrived at the unit at a certain time,
Speaker 2: Ranger School was the piece you were going to. If
Speaker 2: you arrived late into the unit and Ranger School was
Speaker 2: already I think they did one a year, I believe
Speaker 2: you had to go to Marine Recon School, so I
Speaker 2: had a couple of guys go to Marine Rencon and
Speaker 2: which one did you want? At the time, it was
Speaker 2: easy to go to Ranger School because we went in
Speaker 2: more of a pack of a group. And then if
Speaker 2: you went to Marine Recon, you only went as you know,
Speaker 2: whoever it was. You could have been going by yourself,
Speaker 2: and that training is you were just by yourself. You
Speaker 2: went there. You didn't have a team next to you,
Speaker 2: so you had to deal with the actual Marine Corps.
Speaker 2: Was different because you were dealing with the Marine Corps guys.
Speaker 2: There was no other coasts. But in Ranger School it
Speaker 2: was it was a pack, right, We had coasts in there,
Speaker 2: and we had DA agents mixed in together to work
Speaker 2: together at.
Speaker 1: Ranger School, and it was like a familiarization with patrolling,
Speaker 1: if I understood correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we did all of the phase except for
Speaker 2: jump school, and I believe it's the desert phase they
Speaker 2: called it, so, but everything else was in place. We
Speaker 2: did all of the other pieces that were necessary to
Speaker 2: put things together. A lot easier for us to do
Speaker 2: a lot of the military side of things. And Dad,
Speaker 2: it will struggle us the way the military did some
Speaker 2: of the work because DA's structure differently lawnenforcement right outside,
Speaker 2: it's a little bit more technical on things, and the
Speaker 2: military has been pretty pretty much a little bit more
Speaker 2: like you know, just going and and take just take
Speaker 2: over everything. But the law enforcement side of it had
Speaker 2: a little bit of a problem to it because there
Speaker 2: was a lot of rules that they weren't allowed to
Speaker 2: engage in sure as the military would.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely, but the point is to give you
Speaker 1: the patrolling skills, but also so that you can teach
Speaker 1: it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, correct. Everything that we did, the biggest piece was
Speaker 2: to take everything that we were trained for, take it
Speaker 2: down there to the host nation and train with in
Speaker 2: Bolivia they were called the Uma Park and the naval
Speaker 2: side of it to make sure that they received the
Speaker 2: same training. Wead that to help them navigate whatever piece
Speaker 2: that they needed to do within their system, whether it
Speaker 2: was on boats or patrolling or just operations and mapping
Speaker 2: and putting you know, clandestine operations together. We were supposed
Speaker 2: to teach everything.
Speaker 1: And after other than ranger school did was there anything
Speaker 1: else they put you through before you were deployable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So my background obviously I was Puerto Rican Italian.
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't speak a look of Spanish. So
Speaker 2: after that training school, we were deployed. My partner that
Speaker 2: went to recon school, we came back. They put us
Speaker 2: in three month to Guatemala. We went down to Guatemala
Speaker 2: for three months. They put us with a post family
Speaker 2: and we went one on one with an instructor or
Speaker 2: a teacher at a school for three months. And in
Speaker 2: those three months you learn you obviously lived with them,
Speaker 2: so it was a lot, you know, just being immersed
Speaker 2: so deep you learned the language really quick. And then
Speaker 2: on that one for me, I came out I qualified
Speaker 2: as a as a translator for this Department of State
Speaker 2: because you could actually get a test down there also,
Speaker 2: and that's what I did. Wow, So we got that
Speaker 2: piece done. Yeah, because it was big. I think the
Speaker 2: DEA guys went to another school. It wasn't as intense
Speaker 2: as ours, but our bigacy was to make sure.
Speaker 3: We spoke the language before we went down there.
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Speaker 1: Bye, Hey guys, I'm Jack Murphy here at the Team House,
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Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about this mission, you know,
Speaker 1: before you get down there. In nineteen ninety one, the
Speaker 1: when the when the first teams got down there. It
Speaker 1: sounds like from you know the book that I read
Speaker 1: behind you, What is it not Your Father's Coast Guard?
Speaker 1: Very interesting book. They talk about how they get down there,
Speaker 1: and the State Department or maybe the DEA had bought
Speaker 1: these Piranha motor boats, but they had all kinds of
Speaker 1: maintenance issues. And then the mother ship, which you guys
Speaker 1: nicknamed the Africa Queen, I guess after the Bowguard movie.
Speaker 1: It was just like eaten through by termites and needed
Speaker 1: to be dry docked. So it's kind of an uphill
Speaker 1: battle from the get go, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. First of all we had, you know, when we
Speaker 2: got down to the boats, the bigges seams, was to
Speaker 2: figure out what we can do mechanically wise to keep
Speaker 2: them running the engines correct.
Speaker 3: Like it was, we did every thing we could do.
Speaker 2: Like for example, when we got these twenty two feet piranhas,
Speaker 2: they had twin engines on them. They were outfitted with
Speaker 2: you know, like I think an them sixty on one
Speaker 2: side and some other stuff, some small technical or some
Speaker 2: armament on the other side. But even like just fiberglass
Speaker 2: and learning how the fiberglass boats and putting all those
Speaker 2: things together. Then you know, you want to understand in
Speaker 2: camouflage mode, right, you're in the middle of the Amazon, right,
Speaker 2: you're trying to go for drug lass. But some of
Speaker 2: these engines we would get them and they actually had
Speaker 2: like an ever rude white and red black you know,
Speaker 2: you know, what do you call shell on it. So
Speaker 2: when you're navigating through the through the river, you got
Speaker 2: these white.
Speaker 3: Engines showing up. So nothing was really like you know,
Speaker 3: camouflage or anything.
Speaker 2: We had to deal with a lot of that, and
Speaker 2: then trying to help them make these these piranhas work
Speaker 2: all all the time, so we were instructing them, but
Speaker 2: it was very, very difficult. You didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of tools. The electrical the motherships were really hard to
Speaker 2: work with because they had to do a lot more
Speaker 2: work and bring in some better infrastructure for the boats
Speaker 2: to be able to travel down these rivers and then
Speaker 2: you know, hold these piranhas so we can get far
Speaker 2: down to the rivers because there was no navigation, there
Speaker 2: was no maps it.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should also talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: the mission actually was and why these drug labs were
Speaker 1: upriver where they were, you know, as the river changed
Speaker 1: his course. I think are they called oxpos where it's
Speaker 1: like the remnants of the old pathway of the river.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there the two seasons, dry season wet seeds.
Speaker 2: Right, so the dry season you could be looking up
Speaker 2: twenty thirty feet up into the mainland because the waters
Speaker 2: dropped so so much. And in the wet season there
Speaker 2: was just rivers everywhere, so you know, you know, you
Speaker 2: had to know how to navigate, especially at night. The
Speaker 2: daytime was a lot easier. A lot of the navel
Speaker 2: it's called the naval and narcotics guys that ran some
Speaker 2: of these boats understood a little bit where things were
Speaker 2: at Most of the time we were hand drawing maps.
Speaker 3: So when we would go up certain rivers.
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of rivers that were pretty big
Speaker 2: that we knew what they were. But once we went.
Speaker 3: Down another river, we were trying to figure things out.
Speaker 2: So you know, the canvas on these jungles was pretty deep,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't like you can get out there and
Speaker 2: run a plane around and find some kind of lab
Speaker 2: out there. You had to go, you know, build information,
Speaker 2: you know, meet the people who lived on the rivers.
Speaker 2: You met a lot of people that were just Indian,
Speaker 2: never seen like a white man before. Right, you had
Speaker 2: to figure that out, and then you had to figure
Speaker 2: the relationship out how you could get to certain pieces.
Speaker 2: But these rivers were it was intense when you when
Speaker 2: when the water was high.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about you know when you arrived in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, when you when you arrived and walked
Speaker 1: onto that situation, what what did you find down there?
Speaker 2: So when I got when I first got down there,
Speaker 2: I had just I was on the I think the
Speaker 2: second tour, so the first one before me in that year.
Speaker 3: They had just did a raid.
Speaker 2: I think the raid was like I think there was
Speaker 2: one of the biggest rays ever on a town.
Speaker 3: It was like six hundred and thirty plus officers, you know.
Speaker 2: Everybody included, that raided a narcotics town called Santa Ana.
Speaker 2: So I forget how many small planes and things that
Speaker 2: they seize. It was a massive operation. So when I
Speaker 2: get down there, everything kind of like was really quiet
Speaker 2: because there was nothing going on. So we had to
Speaker 2: build certain things to figure things out. So by wiping
Speaker 2: that city out, it stopped a lot of the movement
Speaker 2: for those three months that were down there. So when
Speaker 2: I got down to that first year, it wasn't pretty
Speaker 2: because there was nothing going on. The Other problem we
Speaker 2: had is that I don't know if you remember Peter Jennings,
Speaker 2: the reporter that same time frame, ABC comes down there
Speaker 2: to work on the drug wars, and now they find
Speaker 2: themselves like without having any kind of like, you know,
Speaker 2: anything to really report because everything had been kind of
Speaker 2: like quiet down and seized. So it was really hard
Speaker 2: in those two three months. So we just learned a
Speaker 2: lot of things went on patrols, there were some missions
Speaker 2: out there, but a lot of it was really really
Speaker 2: dried up and then it comes back around again after
Speaker 2: three months. Thing. Yeah, it was really it was as
Speaker 2: I remember seeing it on TV that ABC was really
Speaker 2: like it was a shot at snow cap that all
Speaker 2: the money put into this is now seeing like, hey,
Speaker 2: there's nothing really going on.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that that's what you know in special
Speaker 1: Forces they talk about working yourself out of a job,
Speaker 1: and you know, if you're doing that, actually you're doing
Speaker 1: a great job. But as we know, you know, the
Speaker 1: drug trades never going completely away and will always come back.
Speaker 1: And when what what did you guys do? As it
Speaker 1: started to pick back up in Bolivia?
Speaker 2: So for for us Cosey's, the DA guys were in
Speaker 2: charge of all the all the the operations. Basically what
Speaker 2: came in the informants like we didn't have expertise in that.
Speaker 2: We had you know, that's not our job title, like
Speaker 2: to bring in the format, how do we interview? Had
Speaker 2: no interview spiels when it came on to all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So basically what happened when stuff came into this into
Speaker 2: the UH, into the well, we bring it back that
Speaker 2: we actually stayed at a hotel down there. We had
Speaker 2: a place called the Ganadero. There was a four story,
Speaker 2: five story hotel. They lopped off one section of the
Speaker 2: hotel for us, so we had wounds all the way down,
Speaker 2: communications centers and everything we needed, and we had trucks
Speaker 2: down below, and we would you know, bench out of
Speaker 2: that hotel and get to the into the airport to
Speaker 2: get down any helicopter or whatever. They brought all that
Speaker 2: information and then they would call us basically or you know,
Speaker 2: they would say, hey, I need one coasting two coaches here,
Speaker 2: we're going to go, especially if they had the rivers
Speaker 2: that we had to get on those boats. We didn't
Speaker 2: do a lot of like like let's get in a
Speaker 2: helicopter with DEA agents or this go out you know,
Speaker 2: on a constant mission when they're plane. We did disadvantage.
Speaker 2: We would do stuff like that, but they did all
Speaker 2: the missions. We only got on board once. We had
Speaker 2: some riff ring aspect to it that we had to
Speaker 2: actually help them out with.
Speaker 1: The DEA had a whole kind of other piece of
Speaker 1: this that you could do another podcast on really, but
Speaker 1: as I recall, the Dea was down there and they
Speaker 1: had to get tactical training, as you mentioned, and there
Speaker 1: was I wish I could remember the gentleman's name. There
Speaker 1: was a Vietnam Era one range Reconnaissance Patrol guy A
Speaker 1: ranger that brought a lot of the tactical expertise.
Speaker 2: To the DA.
Speaker 1: And then they also had contracted pilots that were flying
Speaker 1: Huey helicopters I think in both Bolivia and Peru if
Speaker 1: I recall correctly, or maybe it was Peru in Colombia,
Speaker 1: but some of the contracted pilots were indeed Vietnam veterans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, correct, the I forget the name of this.
Speaker 2: They used a contracted side piece to support the mission
Speaker 2: to d EA and they were Vietnam veterans.
Speaker 3: Some of the helicopters that we.
Speaker 2: Had in Trinidad in Bolivia were Vietnam helicopters that they used,
Speaker 2: and so you know they had you know, like you know,
Speaker 2: the ballistic shield on the side of the pilot that
Speaker 2: they would pool. But these pilots would come down they
Speaker 2: flew everything from all the helicopters to the to the
Speaker 2: cost us, whatever it was needed.
Speaker 3: They came down.
Speaker 2: They were I think they came in every like two
Speaker 2: to three weeks and they would switch them out. So
Speaker 2: that's what that's what they did. So they had a
Speaker 2: big mission on this whole thing. But you know, I
Speaker 2: get anything else. I was always like, hey, call me,
Speaker 2: I love to go on one of these missions. But
Speaker 2: when you look at the tactical side of it about
Speaker 2: a coach d and a DEA agent in the middle
Speaker 2: of the jungles, the coast guardantsman doesn't really know much
Speaker 2: except for the waterways of things, right, because you know,
Speaker 2: law enforcements a little bit different how they act and
Speaker 2: how they how they maneuvered things. So we were more
Speaker 2: in a support staff than anything. But I always volunteered
Speaker 2: for every mission. I was trying to get on every
Speaker 2: mission that I could because I just thought DA was
Speaker 2: like like Wow, what a place to be if I
Speaker 2: could be there.
Speaker 1: But I think the DEA also had to kind of
Speaker 1: like hang back, like they weren't supposed to be out
Speaker 1: in the front shooting, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Everything was supposed to be basically the responsibility of
Speaker 2: the owing part of the host nations to help them out.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of difficult because there was a
Speaker 2: lot of corruption in the whole thing, so you couldn't
Speaker 2: you know, when information came in. They were really like
Speaker 2: there was a few people that they could trust and.
Speaker 3: They knew who they were.
Speaker 2: But even like when they would go out of missions,
Speaker 2: and when we went out of missions, we just pulled.
Speaker 3: Them along with us.
Speaker 2: The minute that that mission needed to go, we would
Speaker 2: pull them in and brief them on that way out
Speaker 2: what we were doing with them, right, because a lot
Speaker 2: of times if you gave them a brief in the
Speaker 2: night before the mission wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 3: It was going to go to the spot and everybody
Speaker 3: was gone.
Speaker 2: So they had a lot of that piece and then
Speaker 2: they had to make sure that, you know, if you
Speaker 2: wanted to get a successful mission, you had to kind
Speaker 2: of like get them to tag along after we were
Speaker 2: on the way out and then brief.
Speaker 1: Them right right, like tell them you're going on a
Speaker 1: training mission and then brief them on the road.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I And uh so what was your first experience
Speaker 1: like kind of going upriver and doing these riverine operations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was young and some of the
Speaker 2: DA guys us see someone this and you're young, like
Speaker 2: you got a lot of energy. You know, be careful
Speaker 2: when you're out there because it doesn't look like what
Speaker 2: it really is. I mean, if you look back then
Speaker 2: till now, you realize that the risk level was really
Speaker 2: really high. Come back to then. We didn't have all
Speaker 2: these these shootouts going on, right, they didn't have all
Speaker 2: these things.
Speaker 3: They kind of a little bit more respectful.
Speaker 2: If you got into a lab someplace or you found something,
Speaker 2: they used to just scatter on you and not fight back.
Speaker 2: I think there was one instant where one of our
Speaker 2: two of our unit guys got into a big shootout
Speaker 2: down there, and there's a there's an episode on Cops
Speaker 2: where they fly down there to put that episode on
Speaker 2: Cops about the Bolivia side of it. It was a
Speaker 2: huge cachet of weapons and stuff, but I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: to shootout. Also, when I got to the lab, they
Speaker 2: were all gone already, but shots had been fired and
Speaker 2: you just kind of get there, they just scattered.
Speaker 3: That was basically it.
Speaker 2: We didn't have much a lot of times. It was
Speaker 2: just like we not on our side of it. Trinidd
Speaker 2: was different than we had the other group of DA
Speaker 2: agents that were in Chimaray right down the South Park.
Speaker 2: So we had two groups in Bolivia now the south part,
Speaker 2: which I never went to because I was always in Trinidad.
Speaker 2: A couple of the coasts were in Chi Maray also.
Speaker 3: That helped.
Speaker 2: They got into a lot more beef with the traffickers
Speaker 2: than we did because down in the Chapar region it
Speaker 2: was way different than in Shimarray. They actually lived in
Speaker 2: a like in a some shape little camp in the
Speaker 2: middle of the jungle, and that's how they lived for
Speaker 2: three months. Like we were living in the city in
Speaker 2: a hotel, which was like, you know, there was a
Speaker 2: lot of poverty around, but we actually had structure around
Speaker 2: this hot water. They had it too, but they lived
Speaker 2: like you know, they were at Fort Benny and one
Speaker 2: of those little you know huts out there, you know,
Speaker 2: just hanging out and then they would take their missions out.
Speaker 2: They lived in the dirt basically when they went outside,
Speaker 2: it was all jungle.
Speaker 1: The uh in the labs themselves. As I understood it,
Speaker 1: it's mostly the cultivation of cocoa leaves, and sometimes they're
Speaker 1: being processed there and sometimes they're being taken further upriver
Speaker 1: to be processed in plants. Like I said, there's a
Speaker 1: chemical process that they have to go through to manufacture cocaine.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Correct, We we saw this was the beginning stages.
Speaker 2: A lot of times what we would see so our job,
Speaker 2: a lot of times we would see like the beginning stages,
Speaker 2: like you know, you would you would have generators, you
Speaker 2: would have ether, you would sell. You saw a lot
Speaker 2: of guys that you know that the farmers that were
Speaker 2: out there that were helping out in the labs. You
Speaker 2: would see the lesions on their legs from all the
Speaker 2: acid burns. A lot of the stuff would be the
Speaker 2: pace of the coca leaf. And then once they got
Speaker 2: out they were they would send it up river to
Speaker 2: get it up to Columbia or beyond so they could
Speaker 2: keep producing it or you know, cult refining it. So
Speaker 2: we found a lot of base labs and stuff, and
Speaker 2: we found, you know, we were dealing with chemicals a
Speaker 2: lot of times because they need to chemicals to bring
Speaker 2: them into the lab to process this stuff.
Speaker 1: And you guys had to have demolitions training too, right,
Speaker 1: because you're supposed to blow these labs up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So obviously in ranger school, we went to demo
Speaker 2: uh school for whatever however along it was. And you know,
Speaker 2: me as a youngster, I was like, wow, this is amazing.
Speaker 2: You know, just all the different things that tools that
Speaker 2: we had to have underneath us. I didn't I didn't
Speaker 2: expect any of that. So dynamite, T and T claymore
Speaker 2: shape charges, we were blowing up airstrips, and then they
Speaker 2: had some other so we dealt in M sixteen, M
Speaker 2: sixty AK forty seven's grenade launchers things like that. So
Speaker 2: just to help us out, we had grenades and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So they equipped. It was pretty good to
Speaker 2: go down there like it was going to be real.
Speaker 2: Obviously it was.
Speaker 1: Were any other operations during that deployment that kind of
Speaker 1: like stand out for you that were interesting.
Speaker 3: There's a few of them out there.
Speaker 2: I remember going on our mission, talked about the boats
Speaker 2: we actually had. When we were one of my first
Speaker 2: trip down there, I remember meeting a bunch of Navy seals.
Speaker 3: They were down in country.
Speaker 2: Also, they did a lot of training on the outside
Speaker 2: and helped, you know, some of their elite teams go
Speaker 2: on so they didn't get involved in missions. Obviously they
Speaker 2: weren't happy about that. And then we had the I
Speaker 2: think the Navy CBS, I think they're called CBS. They
Speaker 2: came down there and they used to put camps together
Speaker 2: for the military there, the host nation military, so they
Speaker 2: were building like barracks and stuff like that. So they
Speaker 2: were down there too, but every operational wise, they didn't
Speaker 2: get involved. But I remember taking we had some of
Speaker 2: those old right sized pontoon boats with the navyes the
Speaker 2: covers elite, you know, quiet motors. I remember taking a
Speaker 2: group up there. I was on a mission with my
Speaker 2: chief and did some d agents and some humapar. We
Speaker 2: went on like I think it was a thirty six
Speaker 2: hour trip. They had information on I think it was
Speaker 2: the number three uh Arco trafficker for believing.
Speaker 3: They had a location where he was at up on
Speaker 3: the border with Brazil.
Speaker 2: So I knew the rivers because I had gone up
Speaker 2: to those sides before I knew what we were doing.
Speaker 2: Uh So they had asked me to say to leave
Speaker 2: the boat cruise up. There was four boat crew. We
Speaker 2: landed like one of the I think it was Samdwak,
Speaker 2: came like to the little town, put the boats down,
Speaker 2: put them out. They went back. The helicopters went back
Speaker 2: to the city to go pick up the rest of
Speaker 2: the crew because there was just too much weight on
Speaker 2: these helicopters. So around midnight two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: as we departed to go to a location where they
Speaker 2: thought he was at. I had to put camp lights
Speaker 2: all the way up the river every time he made
Speaker 2: a turn of chemical you know, one of those infrared
Speaker 2: camp lights, because we couldn't return.
Speaker 3: We didn't know if we could return correctly. In the
Speaker 3: middle of the night.
Speaker 2: There was no there's no moon or anything, right, so
Speaker 2: you know, I'm thinking to myself, I'm only like twenty
Speaker 2: two to twenty three years old. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is this. I've got to get this, like this
Speaker 2: is real. I remember my heart beaten, I think for
Speaker 2: the entire thirty six hours because I'm like, I've got
Speaker 2: to lead this crew to where we need to go.
Speaker 2: I know where the city's at this little point. We
Speaker 2: need the entrance. Nobody's been up there before from the
Speaker 2: DA guys. They didn't know it. They didn't get on
Speaker 2: both with us. So I think it took us four
Speaker 2: or five hours and we got up to this region
Speaker 2: and then it went once the Uma Park got off
Speaker 2: the boat went into this little town. I think it
Speaker 2: was like six hours of silence. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: a movie. You know, you just kind of there's no
Speaker 2: radio chattering. Everybody's just sitting in this boat and your
Speaker 2: heart is beating because you know, if something goes wrong,
Speaker 2: you've got to go inside and you know, rescue.
Speaker 3: So eventually, you.
Speaker 2: Know, the radio clicks back on and it's like, you know, basically, hey,
Speaker 2: we got them run our way back. So we knew
Speaker 2: that he had a bunch of bodyguards and everything else,
Speaker 2: and we're like, okay, well here's the extraction side of it.
Speaker 3: So we got to get ready. So once they hit
Speaker 3: the beach, when they came down.
Speaker 2: With with with with with the person of interest on
Speaker 2: the boat, everybody out trying to get back to the
Speaker 2: base to the extraction point that was like four hours
Speaker 2: away on these on these rich eyes, and I think
Speaker 2: I blew. I blew a pistol on one of the engines. So,
Speaker 2: you know, the three lead boats that had the person
Speaker 2: of interest in it kind of make it back like
Speaker 2: two hours before us. I just wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: we weren't being followed, you know, or targeting, because your.
Speaker 3: Heartbeat is going, you don't you don't really know.
Speaker 2: There's no real intel about that like there is nowadays.
Speaker 2: You get so much information. Back in those days, you
Speaker 2: didn't have it. You were you were out there by yourself.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I knew that had a you
Speaker 2: know what, a personal eeper, you know, responders like if
Speaker 2: something went down, turn to responder off. They could pick
Speaker 2: you off on the side. That's all we had. The
Speaker 2: radios were okay and they didn't really communicate. Great, you're
Speaker 2: basically on your own. So once we made it back,
Speaker 2: took the person of interest, loaded everything up, did a
Speaker 2: couple of trips back and forth.
Speaker 3: I remember landing, landing at the base.
Speaker 2: Where at the airport in Trinidad with person of interest
Speaker 2: and getting off the helicopters and you know, as soon
Speaker 2: as we landed, this leader jet landed and uh, personal
Speaker 2: interest went to the Leader jet with a couple of guys.
Speaker 2: Think they handed them off to you know, their special
Speaker 2: probably their CIA and our CIA, and they were gone.
Speaker 2: Never saw them again. Wow, that's that's how quick that
Speaker 2: It was like a movie. I remember sitting at that
Speaker 2: airport going, wow, this is this is I've never seen
Speaker 2: that before.
Speaker 3: You know, as of course coast to you're like it's real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty cool that it sounds
Speaker 1: like the Bolivians picked him up without a shot fired.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, of course you never hear back of what happened,
Speaker 2: but the mission was successful. Everybody's like, hey, good job,
Speaker 2: good job.
Speaker 1: Next Yeah, yeah one.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's one of those kind of things.
Speaker 2: As a coast, you say to yourself like, I never
Speaker 2: knew for one second that I would ever be part
Speaker 2: of this and in this system. And I was. I
Speaker 2: was trying to take up so much to understand how
Speaker 2: to work a law enforce because I wanted to.
Speaker 3: Venture into law enforcement Africa postcard.
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Speaker 1: Sea site for details and yeah, you're I just want
Speaker 1: to emphasize that, you know, you're right, it was a
Speaker 1: different world back then. You say, you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: have any maps of these rivers. There's no Google or
Speaker 1: Earth back in those days, there's no ISR, there's no
Speaker 1: drones overhead that are doing surveillance for you. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a different sort of thing that our military today,
Speaker 1: I don't think is they're trying to understand it because
Speaker 1: they know they're going to have to deal with it.
Speaker 1: But we've been very fortunate the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: So you know, you bring up a good point because
Speaker 2: I remember when we were you know, to figure out
Speaker 2: our land av we had the old green boxes. The
Speaker 2: latitude launch shoot would come on and right the military
Speaker 2: satellites would hit those boxes and we could figure ourselves
Speaker 2: out pretty good. Not even the helicopter pilosh would use
Speaker 2: them on our on our routes. We had to use
Speaker 2: them for them because they were they never believed in them.
Speaker 2: So some times they would do everything by map on
Speaker 2: the air. You know, you got these you know Bolivian
Speaker 2: pilots trying to do all these things by you know,
Speaker 2: they have this land this lap map and they were
Speaker 2: trying to navigate themselves the compass and you know we
Speaker 2: have the GPS going, so you know at that time
Speaker 2: we had that too. And then The other thing that
Speaker 2: we had back in that day, which I always bring
Speaker 2: up to people who asked me, I said, I had
Speaker 2: a digital camera.
Speaker 3: There was a mini disc so DA had. I had
Speaker 3: a big lens camera.
Speaker 2: So we would leave on a Sessta to do a
Speaker 2: you know, if I would try to go find a
Speaker 2: lab and doing some information. I remember going up with
Speaker 2: the tenant from the UMA part of the narcotics team,
Speaker 2: and an informant in the back of the CESSTEM, going
Speaker 2: all the way up back to that Brazilian border, which
Speaker 2: I knew pretty well, and circling the Amazon trying to
Speaker 2: take photos of a lab that you couldn't see from
Speaker 2: up there. And remember, you know, I was getting sick
Speaker 2: up there, going in circles trying to take photos.
Speaker 3: There's nothing down there but that that disc. Was reminded of, like, wow,
Speaker 3: this is amazing.
Speaker 2: Because when I got back, they just took this, they
Speaker 2: stuck it in that printer and they started, you know,
Speaker 2: they had analysts down there and they started pulling all
Speaker 2: that data out. I was just, you know, I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: this is amazing. What's going on. So that's how that
Speaker 2: whole disping that and it was it was just digital
Speaker 2: for me, I've never seen that before, but that was
Speaker 2: like nineteen ninety one ninety two.
Speaker 3: That's amazing to me that that existed then.
Speaker 1: And how many trips did you make down there with
Speaker 1: the with the Drug Interdiction Force?
Speaker 2: Either three or four. So I got there nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: ninety one, I started deploying, So I got there to
Speaker 2: like ninety three ninety four, and then things started to change.
Speaker 2: I didn't stay too long in that unit, so there
Speaker 2: was some imbalances that not your father's coast garbage is
Speaker 2: behind me. That's where this is all coming around. Why
Speaker 2: this thing is changing on us. So Soldier Fortune magazine
Speaker 2: was down there for a period of time. They interviewed
Speaker 2: a couple of the guys that were partners that were
Speaker 2: down there, and that's one of the quotes that's in
Speaker 2: there from the magazine that not your Fallow's coast Guard
Speaker 2: and as the admiral was coming out and the new
Speaker 2: admiral will come in that it was like a shot
Speaker 2: at the US coast Guard.
Speaker 3: Basically, and it was like it didn't mean anything wrong.
Speaker 2: It's just that we were beyond the usual coast guard
Speaker 2: duties and it wasn't a shot at the Coast Guard.
Speaker 3: It was just like, hey, it's not your father's coaster,
Speaker 3: it's not an old thing.
Speaker 2: It's a new thing.
Speaker 3: We're trying to it was getting more modern, right, and
Speaker 3: that kind of.
Speaker 2: Turned us a little bit. That soldier. Fortune magazine kind
Speaker 2: of turned the events in Washington for us, and things
Speaker 2: started to change. So I think in my third tour,
Speaker 2: we had some big orders going, you will not get
Speaker 2: off that boat.
Speaker 3: You will not support dea. You know, we started to
Speaker 3: get this in balance and things.
Speaker 2: So all the guys in that unit were all about
Speaker 2: da supporting no matter what the mission was. You know.
Speaker 2: You know, the guys were just so bonded that we
Speaker 2: were going to support them, and we knew them pretty
Speaker 2: much when they when we came back in country, we
Speaker 2: stayed in touch. I have some friends still out there today,
Speaker 2: and we just knew that anything that happened, we were
Speaker 2: going to support them and make sure that they had
Speaker 2: us one hundred percent. But what happens is we started
Speaker 2: getting this this this piece going, hey, don't get off
Speaker 2: the boat. Be in big trouble. Things are going to happen.
Speaker 2: Your jobs to be on that boat. If things go wrong,
Speaker 2: then you know, think about what you need to do.
Speaker 2: But it was it was a big thing on the
Speaker 2: turning kind of like started to change the unit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like risk aversion.
Speaker 2: I wrote.
Speaker 1: There's a quote from one of the guys in the
Speaker 1: book that I thought was pretty good where he says,
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to let the mission fail because of
Speaker 1: a rule. So so what was it like going down
Speaker 1: on your second trip down there?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: How had it changed?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: Once I went down to the second trip, I recognized that, hey,
Speaker 2: we can do a lot of work down there.
Speaker 3: We can do things down there.
Speaker 2: Obviously, obviously you want to make them better because you realize,
Speaker 2: you know, down there they don't have much so outside
Speaker 2: of the city, you know, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 2: poverty right there. They need a lot of work to
Speaker 2: try to you know, trying to help them out. We
Speaker 2: had I think it was called the Narcotics Affairs Section.
Speaker 2: That was where a certain amount of money would come
Speaker 2: into like an admin group, and this admin group was
Speaker 2: creating things around cities and helping like you know, gas
Speaker 2: fuel tanks, helping them out with you know, repaving, like
Speaker 2: the airstrips, you know, all this there was they would
Speaker 2: help out the you know, the locals and try and
Speaker 2: get things up with the money for support.
Speaker 3: So that allowed us to help out and do what
Speaker 3: we needed to do down there.
Speaker 2: But there was a lot of influx money come in
Speaker 2: to help all these you know places to help them
Speaker 2: military wise, you know, whatever they needed, like more boats
Speaker 2: and more of this. They were getting BDU's, they were
Speaker 2: getting training in M sixteen's, they had them two or three's,
Speaker 2: They had dogs, they had a bunch of trains. So
Speaker 2: the US were supporting the umor part and the narcotics trafficking,
Speaker 2: trying to help them grow it and kind of like,
Speaker 2: you know, make this thing go away if we can
Speaker 2: ever do that, and teach them how to do things
Speaker 2: on their own way. So the pilots would come. I
Speaker 2: forget where they used to. They used to take the
Speaker 2: pilots whether they were plane pilot or a helicopter pilot
Speaker 2: and bring them up to the States United States. I
Speaker 2: forget what what base trained them for helicopter piloting and
Speaker 2: for cessnas and DC tens and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But a lot of them would fail, so they would
Speaker 3: send them back.
Speaker 2: So that contract the group I told you that we
Speaker 2: talked about with the that had Vietnam veteran pilots. They
Speaker 2: would send them down to Bolivia and they would do
Speaker 2: like on the job training with these pilots. So that
Speaker 2: was a you know you talk about, you know, risk missions.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a couple of times, well, we've
Speaker 2: had some incidences where uh, you know, we were on
Speaker 2: flight and things were going wrong on our flight because
Speaker 2: the the US pilot would be in the middle and
Speaker 2: then the two other pilots on the Bolivia side would
Speaker 2: be find that plane and things were going wrong. So
Speaker 2: we had a plane crash on one of them. Nobody
Speaker 2: nobody died, obviously. I was on the DC ten. Uh.
Speaker 2: We were leaving the strip in Trinidad, and I remember
Speaker 2: we were going down the airstrip.
Speaker 3: We were fully loaded and then you know, the tail
Speaker 3: comes up and what happened.
Speaker 2: He hit the rudder too hard and I thought we
Speaker 2: went was spun out on the airstrip and we got
Speaker 2: it off the ground, and you know, when we got
Speaker 2: to the Brazilian board, I remember the agent in charge
Speaker 2: for Diego and oh, we are not on that plane anymore.
Speaker 3: We are coming back on helicopter.
Speaker 2: So he re routed the helicopters coming through it for
Speaker 2: six hours and pick us up to take us back. Uh.
Speaker 2: There was a mission where two of the coasts were
Speaker 2: on assess and it was overloaded. So when they went up,
Speaker 2: when they tried to land in chimer Ray, the sess
Speaker 2: on bounce of two or three times on that airstrip
Speaker 2: which was a dirt airstrip, and they went up. They
Speaker 2: tried to pull it back up and installed. So when
Speaker 2: they've been installed it, it slipped over. So when they
Speaker 2: came down, they landed you know, upside down. So nobody injured,
Speaker 2: but enough to you know, do some damage to everybody
Speaker 2: that was the pilot stuff. Like, it was really really
Speaker 2: scary because that that cession that went down, that of
Speaker 2: my partners and it is the week before myself and
Speaker 2: my partner Mike, we had went on a They gave
Speaker 2: us like an R and R in Santa Cruz. It's
Speaker 2: like the city away from all the city that it
Speaker 2: is beautiful, right, it's got everything out there. You can
Speaker 2: go a hotel. They give us two days off. You know,
Speaker 2: you reset yourself. You sit at the pool for a
Speaker 2: couple of days. But when we left Trinidad, we were
Speaker 2: also overloaded and I didn't know how much wink we
Speaker 2: could take but the pilot's going down the airstrip.
Speaker 3: I remember the pilots telling us.
Speaker 2: Mike and I to stand up in the back seat
Speaker 2: because you know, it's only a four seater, so we
Speaker 2: would stand up and they would say, hey, ho, grab us,
Speaker 2: grab the pilot and the co pilot grab us and
Speaker 2: put your weight forward so the tail could rise. So
Speaker 2: you know, you don't think much about that, but when
Speaker 2: you're up in the air, you say to yourself, Okay,
Speaker 2: well this is crazy, and I think we only food
Speaker 2: like a thousand feet off the ground for like four hours.
Speaker 2: All the way down to Santa Cruz with all this gear,
Speaker 2: you know, you kind of did things like that and
Speaker 2: you're like, wow, this is this the way it's supposed
Speaker 2: to you know, there was trips like that. And then,
Speaker 2: speaking of that same Sesson, when I was doing that
Speaker 2: trip up and up in the mamared which is the
Speaker 2: river on the Brazilian border, I remember like, after doing
Speaker 2: all those photo shots at the digital camera, you know,
Speaker 2: on the way back, I had fell asleep. That was
Speaker 2: nauseous as it could be. And when I fell asleep,
Speaker 2: I woke up to the engine stop it. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a single engine, and the first thing I grabbed
Speaker 2: was my eper, going, oh oh, it was my Emrie,
Speaker 2: where's my eper?
Speaker 3: Make sure I have my weapons When we landed.
Speaker 2: When this plane hits the ground, I'm jumping out like
Speaker 2: I'm like, it's it's it's survival mode. It forgot to
Speaker 2: swift the fuel tanks, so they went dry for like
Speaker 2: ten minutes. And then I couldn't figure out why. The
Speaker 2: pilot underneath it was kind of like it looked like
Speaker 2: a lawnmower. He was trying to, you know, timb the
Speaker 2: engine back up with the gas because he forgot to
Speaker 2: switch the fuel tanks. But you know, in those moments,
Speaker 2: you don't know what's going on. You're thinking, like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're in big trouble. This plane is going down. They
Speaker 2: always say they can glive. I wasn't up for that,
Speaker 2: but yeah, he turned it back over. It took them
Speaker 2: ten minutes, so it was it was kind of strange.
Speaker 2: But I got back to the base and you know,
Speaker 2: back to the office, and I was telling the agent
Speaker 2: and charge is like, can't do that again. You forgot
Speaker 2: to switch field tanks. We went dry.
Speaker 3: You know, like you're trying to go home.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean years later when those Diner Core guys
Speaker 1: went down in Colombia because of mechanical failure, I think
Speaker 1: like one of the big like after action, uh you
Speaker 1: know points was no more single engine aircraft ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's the name of I could remember
Speaker 2: Dining Cole. That's the same guys in there, Dinald Okay, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: they were great. They were really great. They were great
Speaker 2: to have the mechanics who come down there and everything.
Speaker 2: I just do that on this these training days, like
Speaker 2: when we were up there, they were being them going gosh,
Speaker 2: you just got to make it through the flight, because
Speaker 2: even the Dining cor guys were trying to make it right.
Speaker 2: So and then you know in the helicopter they tried
Speaker 2: a couple of times they try to do an auto
Speaker 2: rotate on I don't know sure you know that it
Speaker 2: is on an auto rotate where they stopped the blade
Speaker 2: and then they wanted to do whatever an auto rotate
Speaker 2: for a train as I never wanted to be part
Speaker 2: of that. Any time we went off, I made sure
Speaker 2: there was no auto rotation going on, like we're not
Speaker 2: doing that. It's scary, you know, you're trying to you know,
Speaker 2: also come home.
Speaker 1: And as as the mission is going on, you know,
Speaker 1: on your now second trip down there, how are you
Speaker 1: perceiving the sort of efficacy of the operation overall, because
Speaker 1: I mean, on paper, it's very smart to go after
Speaker 1: the drugs at the source. That's probably the smartest way
Speaker 1: to handle it. Did you think it was being effective?
Speaker 1: What did you think of the program?
Speaker 2: So you're not knowing much about the narcotics, like the
Speaker 2: piece of it of how much actually being produced and
Speaker 2: where it's going and coming up like DA would have
Speaker 2: you know that information. They know a lot more. I
Speaker 2: remember that second one. So my my my lieutenant then
Speaker 2: was bob out of there. He had a great mission.
Speaker 2: What we did we started doing co star stuff on
Speaker 2: those boats because we knew that we were getting pulled
Speaker 2: away from being on certain missions. So at that time,
Speaker 2: I think they had three mother ships at that time.
Speaker 2: I forget the names of it. I got some photos
Speaker 2: of them. He decided we put up an operational plan
Speaker 2: and they decided to kind of like shut the rivers
Speaker 2: down so nothing could move except forward by plane. So
Speaker 2: we went up there. I think it was like either
Speaker 2: two week or two and a half week patrol where
Speaker 2: we took all the Coast Guard guys, took two DA
Speaker 2: agents or three, put them on the ship with us,
Speaker 2: and the mother boat took the four piranhas out. Everybody
Speaker 2: had piranhas. We went out and we just locked everything down.
Speaker 2: So we started boarding and moving anything that moved on
Speaker 2: the river. We just grabbed whatever it was. So we
Speaker 2: were blowing things down, making sure there was no movements.
Speaker 2: You know, you find some kilos here and kilos there,
Speaker 2: people moving small little loads, but we were inside of
Speaker 2: those labs. But it was shutting things down on the
Speaker 2: rivers and it was a big impact at that one time.
Speaker 2: So we we realized that we had it to generate
Speaker 2: Coast Guard missions to help them out understand how to
Speaker 2: navigate the river, and that's what we started doing. So
Speaker 2: and then we started just going on any that we
Speaker 2: would just take a patrol and leave the mothership and
Speaker 2: two piranhas go one way, the other two pranas go
Speaker 2: the other way. We had everybody we needed, and we
Speaker 2: would just patrol the rivers and try to hit every
Speaker 2: single little smaller river, go down the stream and see
Speaker 2: what we can do.
Speaker 3: And then you know, like you know, drop the insins down.
Speaker 2: Listen see if we can hear like labs and talk
Speaker 2: to people pick up information. Is there anything out there
Speaker 2: is that are not we also, I think we made
Speaker 2: my second my third. I think my third one. I
Speaker 2: started to tell myself, why are you guys walking so
Speaker 2: much to get to a lab? Because one of the
Speaker 2: biggest problems we had is that if you find a
Speaker 2: person that had information on a lab, they would take
Speaker 2: you there, right, that's your informant. But they would always say, yeh,
Speaker 2: it's just down, it's just down over here to the bend,
Speaker 2: and then you'd be four hours later, you're still walking.
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, it's not too far away. And I
Speaker 3: used to say to myself, well, why.
Speaker 2: Would you do it that way? So we started bringing
Speaker 2: in I think we were able to get nas a
Speaker 2: college fair second and buy like six cross bikes, and
Speaker 2: I said, why not buy cross bikes and try to
Speaker 2: make it a little easier. So we started taking these
Speaker 2: motorcycles cross bikes. I got a great photo of on
Speaker 2: them them. Obviously they weren't camelflalls. They were red in color.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's nothing you could do.
Speaker 1: But like now with sake dirt bikes, Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2: That's it the cross bikes and we would load it
Speaker 2: on the front of the prana and we would go
Speaker 2: out and then when we hit a certain place, we
Speaker 2: would drop those bikes down. We would get on those
Speaker 2: bikes and we would patrol. And that's how we did
Speaker 2: a lot of that stuff. We got more coverage and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, because you know, the information was only
Speaker 2: so much that we could get so and when we
Speaker 2: had good information, it basically did an operation. They would
Speaker 2: they would get it right where DA would really take
Speaker 2: over and really run that operation with helicopters, really hit
Speaker 2: it like hit a hit a ranch or a lab
Speaker 2: that was really deep.
Speaker 5: But we did a lot of information grabbing for DA too,
Speaker 5: So we just knew that our mission was probably more
Speaker 5: to hey, get what we can get for them, let
Speaker 5: them do their job, and then you know, that way
Speaker 5: we would you know, we would be good at headquarters.
Speaker 2: We didn't want any problem with headquarters.
Speaker 1: The impression I got from reading the book it seemed
Speaker 1: like the operation was effective enough that it actually pushed
Speaker 1: a lot of the drug trade further up river. That
Speaker 1: they were transporting the cocoa leaves up river I believe
Speaker 1: into Columbia for processing as opposed to doing it, you
Speaker 1: know in your area of operations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were pretty dry. We didn't get a lot
Speaker 2: when we did. I believe the Chain Ray guys, the
Speaker 2: other guys, they were doing a lot more than us.
Speaker 2: Even in Peru, they were hitting a lot. When we
Speaker 2: did our side of it, it was like it just
Speaker 2: seemed like it was compressed somehow. I don't know if
Speaker 2: we were doing a good job or not, but it
Speaker 2: was just harder to figure it out where everything was at.
Speaker 2: The people were easy to speak with, you know, you
Speaker 2: didn't have this whole thing, you know, because you know,
Speaker 2: they just lived out in the middle of the field
Speaker 2: and that we we figured a couple of little things out.
Speaker 2: We would hit some airstrips. I think there's one of them.
Speaker 2: I wasn't part of it, but they had found that
Speaker 2: they they actually dismantled Assessma and walked it through the
Speaker 2: jungle and put it back together and flew it out
Speaker 2: of a jungle.
Speaker 3: That's what they were doing.
Speaker 2: They were like they were trying to be so creative
Speaker 2: that it was onlie I think it was in Shi Maray.
Speaker 2: You know, they would walk the wings in. You know,
Speaker 2: they have these farmers that they would pay or whatever,
Speaker 2: and they would do all the work. Basically, that's who
Speaker 2: did all the work. They weren't really the traffickers. They
Speaker 2: were just being run by the traffickers. So somebody in
Speaker 2: there was actually showing.
Speaker 3: Them how to do things. And then you know they
Speaker 3: would you give them whatever they would give them to
Speaker 3: keep them going.
Speaker 2: But you know, there was the people who.
Speaker 3: Run the planes that had the frances, had had the farms.
Speaker 2: It was one of those kinds of area where you
Speaker 2: didn't have a lot of intel about you know, what
Speaker 2: plane here, what plane there, what airstrip there. You just
Speaker 2: had to get what you had to get and then
Speaker 2: give it back to DA.
Speaker 3: I'm assessing through their analysis.
Speaker 1: And then what was it like going down there on
Speaker 1: your third trip? Were you in the same place generally?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've always went back down to Trinidad, So I
Speaker 3: had a good routine.
Speaker 2: I thought as a young guy too, I had to
Speaker 2: build my reputation up too, because you know, I wasn't
Speaker 2: great in Ranger school. I was struggling. I got through it.
Speaker 2: After Ranger School. I was putting things together for myself,
Speaker 2: so maybe and I wanted to help those DA guys
Speaker 2: so much. I was so about this drug warst thing
Speaker 2: because it was like, you know, you don't really see
Speaker 2: it much. I came from the Miami area in the
Speaker 2: Coast Guards, so I knew what you know, in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties and nineties looked like in Miami, Key West,
Speaker 2: big time drug zone. So when I was down in Bliviya, like,
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, this is amazing. I really took.
Speaker 2: I was grateful for where I was and what I
Speaker 2: was doing. And obviously my mom was like, oh, I
Speaker 2: can't wait till you're done, because you're down there. You
Speaker 2: know today you see TV all the time on all
Speaker 2: these shows. It's something that we were doing way back
Speaker 2: when before anything I ever. We had good we had
Speaker 2: good partnership from DA Bord Tech was down there with
Speaker 2: us too. I forget how many Bordtech officers came down there,
Speaker 2: so you know, Bordatrol tactical units and then being stationed
Speaker 2: in Portsmouth, Virginia, which is you know, it's it's what
Speaker 2: they call that area, the tightwater area Norfolk Chesapy, Portsmouth,
Speaker 2: Virginia Beach. We had connections to the Navy seal team
Speaker 2: that was there too. So anytime I came back, I
Speaker 2: always used to try to, you know, figure my gear
Speaker 2: out because my gear wasn't white, and how do I
Speaker 2: hold this?
Speaker 3: And how do I do that?
Speaker 2: Because we didn't have all that tactical gear. So I
Speaker 2: would design some of the gear stuff and I would
Speaker 2: go into Navy CEOs and I said, hey, can you
Speaker 2: construct this for me? I'll pay you for it, and
Speaker 2: then they would do their own thing that they liked it,
Speaker 2: they kept the designer was theirs. But I remember doing
Speaker 2: like N sixteen magazines because I didn't like them on
Speaker 2: the belt anymore, like the old style. I'd put them
Speaker 2: up on my chest. So I needed somebody to create
Speaker 2: me a belt that could hold my magazines. So that
Speaker 2: was the other thing, too, is to create things to
Speaker 2: make it easier for us to do our job down there.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was, you know, just out of curiosity, you know,
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you ever came across one of
Speaker 1: the seals that I know is down there at that
Speaker 1: time frame, Herschel Davis.
Speaker 2: This is yes, So my chief chief Davis knows Herschel,
Speaker 2: and I know who Herschel is.
Speaker 3: I did not, I think I met him once. But
Speaker 3: on the side, is that make sense because I do know,
Speaker 3: he he's that guy.
Speaker 2: He's like he was that guy down there that was
Speaker 2: running the show for sure, very well respected. We all
Speaker 2: knew who he was, and you know, his knowledge was
Speaker 2: absolutely amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've had him on on the podcast a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. Great guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has a lot going you know. Back in
Speaker 2: those days, those guys were doing some things we've never
Speaker 2: heard of, right. So yeah, and then we met a
Speaker 2: Navy seal back then. Now, you know, they're more exposed
Speaker 2: because of the social media that's out there. Those days,
Speaker 2: you didn't know any agency was unless you personally.
Speaker 1: Met one, right Yeah. And I mean this is also
Speaker 1: the timeframe where all of this is happening, but also
Speaker 1: things are starting to really heat up with the meda
Speaker 1: ying cartel in Colombia and all the stuff that killing Pablo.
Speaker 1: Everything we know today about what was going on down there,
Speaker 1: and the book You Know, Not Your Father's Coast Guard
Speaker 1: also gets into how the Coast Guard was not just
Speaker 1: in Bolivia but also in Colombia, in Ecuador and Panama
Speaker 1: a number of different countries, not not necessarily doing the
Speaker 1: type of stuff you were, but they're still pretty active.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in this so we would do three month tours, right,
Speaker 2: So within those three months, I also went to Panama
Speaker 2: and I also went to Costa Rica. So the snow
Speaker 2: cap had a team in Bolivia. They eventually went to
Speaker 2: Guatemala and they were also we were down in.
Speaker 3: Ecuador, so even that wasn't a snowcapped thing.
Speaker 2: In Ecuador. We would send guys down to Ecuador and
Speaker 2: they would do whatever they needed to do down there,
Speaker 2: So we were all over the place, so we had
Speaker 2: guys everywhere. I never went to Ecuador, but I went
Speaker 2: to Panama and I went to Costa Rica on the
Speaker 2: side with my lieutenant who eventually passes away, Joe Rodriguez.
Speaker 2: He's uh, he went to Marine Recon. He was a lieutenant.
Speaker 2: We went down to Costa Rica. We went on the
Speaker 2: south side of the city side to help out their
Speaker 2: coast guard, trying to figure things out what they had
Speaker 2: going on. For like a week, we didn't really do much,
Speaker 2: and then we ended up in Panama to help the
Speaker 2: Panamanians out in their waterway things, and we were down
Speaker 2: there for a little while.
Speaker 3: I never went to Columbia.
Speaker 2: I think one of the guys went to Columbia, but
Speaker 2: we were basically our biggest hubs were Bolivia and Ecuador.
Speaker 2: That's where our hubs were. So every three months when
Speaker 2: we would go back and tour, we would have to
Speaker 2: go to Quantico and requalify with DA and then when
Speaker 2: we would leave Andrews Air Force Base at that time
Speaker 2: was that was the name, right, they would take us
Speaker 2: out in the one all packaged up. We would go
Speaker 2: to Guatemala first, drop a team off there, you know,
Speaker 2: go to Panama, stay overnight and then I'm sorry, Panama, Guatemala.
Speaker 2: The tour was we stay over night to Panama and
Speaker 2: then we would actually go into Perud drop a team off,
Speaker 2: and then we would go to Bolivia and drop a
Speaker 2: team and that was the last sea we'll get dropped off.
Speaker 3: So that's how they routed everything. So that's everything without
Speaker 3: an Andrew's Air Force Base.
Speaker 1: Uh so what were you kind of observing on that
Speaker 1: on that last trip down to Bolivia. How did things
Speaker 1: change and how was things changing for the Drug inter
Speaker 1: Addiction Assist Team.
Speaker 2: So my last tour is probably the worst tour because
Speaker 2: we had to be the bosses are now being switched.
Speaker 2: The one bosses that we have now we have I
Speaker 2: believe it's a commander in right now at that time,
Speaker 2: So we're getting that switch and basically on that switch
Speaker 2: where basically, hey, you're going to go down there. You're
Speaker 2: gonna do nothing but mission support for the teams down there,
Speaker 2: but you're not gonna be.
Speaker 3: Staying with DEA anymore. We used to stay together, so.
Speaker 2: We had a Coast Guard liaison commander down there that
Speaker 2: stayed at the embassy. They set us up in an
Speaker 2: old narcotics house, traffickers house, and they had like seven bedrooms.
Speaker 2: So all we did was that we didn't even have
Speaker 2: weapons anymore. So our last tour we went down there,
Speaker 2: we didn't get on to ce One. For one, we
Speaker 2: didn't go to Quantico. They really cut us off. The
Speaker 2: Coast Guard did not DA. They cut us off and.
Speaker 3: Basically flew us down there on a commercial jet.
Speaker 2: Stay down there where your BDUs and sself and your
Speaker 2: job every day was to go out there and help
Speaker 2: the host nation on anything they needed. No more operation,
Speaker 2: we were done, so we would go see DA guys.
Speaker 2: They had moved over from a hotel. They had their
Speaker 2: own little area now they had like another home. They
Speaker 2: had this warehouse basically, and we would go in there
Speaker 2: and try to help them out whatever they needed. It
Speaker 2: was support here and there or whatever. We did all
Speaker 2: that stuff, but they were cutting us out because they
Speaker 2: were cutting that unit out, that this DA unit was
Speaker 2: being cut out, and you could see it. I felt
Speaker 2: it because I felt, you know, later, when I get back,
Speaker 2: I knew I was getting cut out because I only
Speaker 2: been there three and a half years and they were
Speaker 2: not going to retain me on my next my next billet.
Speaker 3: They didn't want to retain me. They wanted me out.
Speaker 2: So everybody that was basically in there was being shoved out,
Speaker 2: and they brought in new staffing because the whole mission
Speaker 2: was changing and they didn't want the old guys or
Speaker 2: the guys that had history with DA and Snowcap confusing
Speaker 2: their new mission, like we were gonna make it worse, right,
Speaker 2: we were coasting. I mean, we're military guys, well would
Speaker 2: you you know? So I could I could feel the
Speaker 2: cut coming out. It wasn't pretty. What didn't do a
Speaker 2: lot way from us? I think I think a lot
Speaker 2: of DA guys, like the bosses. I was really good
Speaker 2: with the fifteen's and I had, you know, you sit
Speaker 2: down with them and they were really disappointed. Why the
Speaker 2: mission was changing for us when you know, we were
Speaker 2: always good for them and helping them out a lot.
Speaker 3: We did a lot of work. We did the Grant
Speaker 3: vert basically, you know, when.
Speaker 2: We were refueling, putting ammunition on the planes or on
Speaker 2: the helicopters, you know, moving these these uh these these
Speaker 2: rhis from one helicopter to another, doing all that work
Speaker 2: for DA. That's what we did.
Speaker 3: We were supporting the mission and we were getting cut out.
Speaker 2: So it was not great. You know, we were part
Speaker 2: of that anymore. So when we went we went to
Speaker 2: our own little home and DA was at another location
Speaker 2: in the same city. It was it was tough. I
Speaker 2: didn't I didn't like it. I was like, it's not
Speaker 2: good anymore. Coffee. See, the commandant was switched out, and
Speaker 2: you know, they were taking everything from us because the
Speaker 2: name was going to change eventually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what did this unit eventually turn into?
Speaker 2: So it's International Maritime Law Enforcement Training Team basically, and
Speaker 2: they went from drug in addition to International Maritime Law Enforcement.
Speaker 2: So and they were changing everything that you know, they
Speaker 2: were going to support it that way. Cut the name out,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, you get rid of the name,
Speaker 2: you get rid of everything old yeah. I was like
Speaker 2: I could see it, I could feel it, but I
Speaker 2: knew that, you know, it would never be the same
Speaker 2: unit again.
Speaker 3: It was going to change its mission out and it
Speaker 3: was time for me to find.
Speaker 2: Something else to go to.
Speaker 1: And the new mission was basically going to be strictly
Speaker 1: like training coast guards of foreign nations.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's correct. Yeah, no more like you know, M
Speaker 2: sixteen blocks by that stuff is gone.
Speaker 3: No more BDUs. You'll be black and your blues.
Speaker 2: You know, they used to tell us, hey, you guys
Speaker 2: have gotten too native. You know, we weren't native like
Speaker 2: we always we did the military job when we came back,
Speaker 2: you know, we were always in uniform and clean shaven.
Speaker 2: We didn't do all that crazy stuff like people thought.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, like I said that Soldier Force
Speaker 2: the magazine pushed too hard. I guess people have this
Speaker 2: idea what we were doing, but it wasn't really like that.
Speaker 1: And as all of these changes are coming and you're
Speaker 1: kind of feeling that you have to go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: To me, what did you end up doing with the
Speaker 1: rest of your career?
Speaker 2: So you know, when I so when I reached this unit,
Speaker 2: I just was like, Wow, this I was going back
Speaker 2: to the coaster, going what else is out there? And realistically, well,
Speaker 2: let me take this back. When they didn't re up
Speaker 2: me to stay. You know, I make E five in
Speaker 2: that unit. You know, I took the test in there,
Speaker 2: so I was in E five. Then within the unit
Speaker 2: they got me to do the test and do things.
Speaker 2: I went back to Key West as what was the
Speaker 2: official word at base security, basically back to West.
Speaker 3: So I went right back where I came from. I
Speaker 3: was ecstatic.
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, going right back, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not looking at the ship or anything. I was on
Speaker 2: base security when I went back down there. Obviously what
Speaker 2: I was doing, I was picking up all the Cuban
Speaker 2: immigrants that would land on the beach, you know, from
Speaker 2: morning to night, and I would get call out. I
Speaker 2: would work with Police Service FPS, so I would drive
Speaker 2: up the keys. It was a federal police service. We
Speaker 2: would pick up, put them in the van, drove them
Speaker 2: all the way back down the Key West. I and
Speaker 2: S at the time, Immigration National Service would show up,
Speaker 2: caught them all up, put a fingerprint and send them
Speaker 2: up to Miami. I did that for a while, so
Speaker 2: my lieutenant that I went to Panama with in Costa Rica.
Speaker 2: He became the lieutenant in charge for the Law Enforcement
Speaker 2: Detachment team in Miami, so as I was getting close
Speaker 2: to nineteen nine, so.
Speaker 3: I stayed at that DA unit for three and a
Speaker 3: half years. I only had a year and a half left.
Speaker 2: On my on my man bill it basically, and I
Speaker 2: was like, why why aren't you just extended. I stayed
Speaker 2: in Portsman. They didn't want to do that. They're like, no, no,
Speaker 2: you're out going back to Key West for a year
Speaker 2: and a half. So I went back to another base
Speaker 2: for only a year and a half and then at
Speaker 2: that at my extension time, Joe Rodriguez was going to
Speaker 2: pull me up into Miami to be part of the
Speaker 2: lead A unit again. So it was this the highest
Speaker 2: union that the Coast Guard has when it comes to
Speaker 2: law enforcement and then travel they jump on the femroon
Speaker 2: with the Navy.
Speaker 3: They do all this long enforcem mission interdiction. So when
Speaker 3: I got to the end.
Speaker 2: My base, XO.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't confirm that I could go to Miami once I
Speaker 3: re enlisted.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't guarantee it, and Joe Rodrigue was trying to
Speaker 2: get me up there if I reenlisted. I was going
Speaker 2: to Miami. But the basicso FROs that he goes, hey listen,
Speaker 2: you reenlist, there's no guarantee you're gone. So I didn't reenlist.
Speaker 2: So once that happened, I was on my way out.
Speaker 2: I went. My process was, hey us Marshals, I can't
Speaker 2: get in dea. I was.
Speaker 3: I only had a high school diploma, so I didn't
Speaker 3: have a lot of that upper education that you needed.
Speaker 2: So when I got out, I stayed up in the
Speaker 2: Miami area for a lot of area and within the
Speaker 2: year I got hired in the Brower Sheriff's Office and
Speaker 2: that's where I went for twenty two years. Wow, so
Speaker 2: you know, I was twenty eight years old. I went
Speaker 2: to the academy for six months. I blew right through
Speaker 2: the academy like because you know, the academy to me
Speaker 2: was I've done all this stuff, and that DA Snowcap
Speaker 2: mission taught me so much about how to do things
Speaker 2: on the law. So when I went to the academy like,
Speaker 2: I had no problems. I was in and out real quick.
Speaker 2: As soon as I graduated. I did my first six
Speaker 2: months as a patrol officer up in Deerfield Beach and
Speaker 2: within the six months I was. I was on probation
Speaker 2: for what a year plus. They took me right off
Speaker 2: the patrol car. I was in detective bureau, and then
Speaker 2: three years later I found myself doing.
Speaker 3: Undercover work.
Speaker 2: I was off the streets and I worked in in
Speaker 2: a specialized unit that would just organized crime, and that's
Speaker 2: where I was. I did that for almost two thousand
Speaker 2: and two to like twenty seventeen. Never came out of it,
Speaker 2: never where wore uniform again. I was a detective. Then
Speaker 2: I did a bunch of wire and you know, I
Speaker 2: learned to do wire taps. I was you know, I was,
Speaker 2: I was an affian. I did wire taps, I did
Speaker 2: all kinds of crazy stuff, you know. And then I
Speaker 2: became a super icing KAM sergeant and that's how I
Speaker 2: ended my career. I retired like that as a sergeant.
Speaker 2: But that background of those four years or three and
Speaker 2: a half years with that dat units, those pieces why
Speaker 2: I became And I always asked myself, oh, how is
Speaker 2: it possible? You never got even when I got promoted
Speaker 2: in the Sheriff's office, they were supposed to keep them
Speaker 2: to the streets because that's you got to go as
Speaker 2: a sergeant. You got to go back for the streets.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be a sergeant on the streets. I
Speaker 2: never went back from the sheriff down. They were like, nope,
Speaker 2: you're going right into this unit. This is your unit.
Speaker 3: You handled it.
Speaker 2: So, you know, I worked with swat teams, I worked
Speaker 2: on narcotics teams. I did all that stuff. So I
Speaker 2: was just in that phase like, you know, this is
Speaker 2: what I wanted. I wish the Coastguard could could have
Speaker 2: kept what they had. They just lost me because I
Speaker 2: wanted more law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. I'm And so you
Speaker 1: were doing like a lot of like undercovered drug buys
Speaker 1: and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. So I found out real quick that
Speaker 2: I wasn't a good liar because you know, to me,
Speaker 2: that's a hard trait. You got to be like deep
Speaker 2: in that stuff, like it's like it's got to really work.
Speaker 2: So when I first started, that's where I was at.
Speaker 2: I was doing undercover stuff. I bought some key lows,
Speaker 2: you know, I was running around. I was a cigarette
Speaker 2: dealer for a while. You know, I was truckloads of cigarettes.
Speaker 2: You know, when you get into the street stuff at
Speaker 2: a local place, you have a lot more access to
Speaker 2: do things and how you're doing things right. You get
Speaker 2: all this, you know, these pieces going on, and then
Speaker 2: after a while, I found myself being more of a
Speaker 2: you know I was.
Speaker 3: I was better as a case agent than I was
Speaker 3: as an undercover.
Speaker 2: So you know, I would pull the group together, good detectives,
Speaker 2: good undercovers, put the case together and put it, you know,
Speaker 2: to the US Attorney's office. That's what we usually work with,
Speaker 2: and just grab these organized crimes. I worked the mob,
Speaker 2: basically the mafia for a while down here in South Florida.
Speaker 2: That's where everybody comes to vacation. So I worked at
Speaker 2: for a while. I did, you know, some big time
Speaker 2: while you know wire taps, you know I did it
Speaker 2: for months. You know, as an athlete and wire tab
Speaker 2: I've always been told like this, and not everybody can
Speaker 2: do a wire tap. You know you'd be part of one.
Speaker 2: You know you can be part of a wire tap case.
Speaker 2: But when you put it together and put your name
Speaker 2: on that dot a line, that changes everything is right
Speaker 2: because the liabilities go way up and you got to
Speaker 2: make sure everything I did. I did six of them,
Speaker 2: so it were great. I mean, you just learn how
Speaker 2: to do things at another level, and I always go
Speaker 2: back to my Coast Guard background because that's where it
Speaker 2: comes from.
Speaker 1: And this was also mostly counter narcotics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, counter narcotics yup.
Speaker 2: And then my last ten years I went into the
Speaker 2: human trafficking Internet stuff, so I did a lot of
Speaker 2: human trafficking too at the end. So I was part
Speaker 2: of the Violent Crimes against Children's squad with the FBI,
Speaker 2: so I was sworn in with them too. But you know,
Speaker 2: I did the human trafficking stuff, you know, That's what
Speaker 2: I was doing in the Coast Guard basically. But now
Speaker 2: working with Border Patrol was a lot easier for me
Speaker 2: because I had a background from the previous with Bord tax.
Speaker 2: So when I went to Border Patrol here in Daniel Beach, Florida,
Speaker 2: like with the Boston and the major stuff to me
Speaker 2: doing the job that they were looking helpful because you know,
Speaker 2: they don't have a lot of people the staff, so
Speaker 2: US supporting their their their their their their in their
Speaker 2: coastal and intercultural areas of you know, this human trafficking
Speaker 2: side of things. It was easy for me. I put
Speaker 2: a ton of heaps together, Patrol here and Patrol there,
Speaker 2: organized this get that whatever they needed to support support
Speaker 2: their missions to them. So it wasn't hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like the Coast Guard set you up
Speaker 1: for success.
Speaker 3: Always grateful, you know, I did my nine years.
Speaker 2: I was so grateful that that pie, especially in the academy,
Speaker 2: was like, wow, you're moving quick than usual. So and
Speaker 2: I thought that was a good thing because you learned,
Speaker 2: you know. I'll tell you a funny story. When I
Speaker 2: my first my first two days of leaving with the
Speaker 2: Sheriff's Office, I had given it to the sergeant. It
Speaker 2: gave him forty eight hours of leave, so I was
Speaker 2: on patrol. He calls me in one night, he goes
Speaker 2: forty eight hours of leave, and you've got two days.
Speaker 2: That's not two days, it's sixteen hours. I'm like, what
Speaker 2: do you mean sixteen it's it's one day's twenty four.
Speaker 2: He goes, no, eight.
Speaker 1: Hours, right, you know your MILLI right, they're always on duty.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I only had like.
Speaker 3: Sixty hours of leave on the books at that time.
Speaker 2: It was new.
Speaker 3: I walked out of there going, wow, this life is good.
Speaker 2: Only eight hours and I asked for two days.
Speaker 3: I take sixteen out of sixty.
Speaker 2: I'm good.
Speaker 3: I got it like out, I can take a lot
Speaker 3: of leave. Yeah, because you know, in the military, one day,
Speaker 3: twenty four hours, Yeah that you leave. And that's a
Speaker 3: funny story. I just thought, how grateful that I am,
Speaker 3: So you learn a lot.
Speaker 1: I heard it story years ago about ah, this was
Speaker 1: back in the day, and it was a dude Special Force.
Speaker 1: This guy he was on a mission supporting the CIA
Speaker 1: down in Central America and at the end of the trip,
Speaker 1: all the CIA guys start filling out their per diem
Speaker 1: and the SF guy goes and he starts filling his out.
Speaker 1: He's like, whoa, you're in the military. You don't get
Speaker 1: per diem. And at that point he made the decision
Speaker 1: to get out of the SF and go to the CIA.
Speaker 2: Wow. You know, this is a funny story too, because
Speaker 2: when we were down there, we got per deemed too military, right,
Speaker 2: and we made a little bit more more money than
Speaker 2: usual because we had the like we got some extra
Speaker 2: hazard pay whatever. But when we found out what those
Speaker 2: DA guys were making to go down in those operations.
Speaker 2: You know, you handle you know, you touch a grenade,
Speaker 2: there's your demo pay. You put your foot on top
Speaker 2: of the helicopter and never go anywhere. That's your that's
Speaker 2: your flight pay you have. They had they you know,
Speaker 2: they were making way more than we were, and I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't know if I want to be
Speaker 2: here that long because I got to, you know, doing
Speaker 2: these missions. I need to make a little bit more
Speaker 2: money that I'm doing because the risk factor is way
Speaker 2: up there. But you know, you start to learn a
Speaker 2: lot what you know, how it really works for people
Speaker 2: when they you know, they put their lives on the line.
Speaker 2: It's not you know, money is not everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you realize we were cheap, really cheap, but.
Speaker 1: It's it's a quality of life thing, you know. I
Speaker 1: think there there are some special Operations commanders out there
Speaker 1: who really don't want to let their guys go and
Speaker 1: be attachments to a DA or an FBI or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, what c I A whatever it is, because
Speaker 1: they'll see what the other side is like and get
Speaker 1: out pretty quick. But as far as you know, the
Speaker 1: the d I A T and this whole Coast Guard
Speaker 1: mission we're talking about, I mean, it's uh interesting, and
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of obscure. There's only a few stories
Speaker 1: and special Soldier of Fortune magazine that you mentioned that
Speaker 1: you sent to me actually, and then the book not
Speaker 1: your Father's Coastguard. So there's not a lot out there
Speaker 1: about you guys.
Speaker 2: No, And I think you know, the book came out
Speaker 2: because they were doing a history on where it's at today,
Speaker 2: right with the units that are out there, and you
Speaker 2: got a couple of guys that graduate Seal school now
Speaker 2: and you know they've moved it around.
Speaker 3: You see it now with these these these narcotic submarines.
Speaker 2: The Coast Guard guys out there, you know, they live
Speaker 2: like some Special Forces unit, jumping on top of you.
Speaker 3: It's amazing where it's at.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I'm super happy for that because they evolved in a
Speaker 3: lot more so.
Speaker 2: But it's one of those kind of things where I
Speaker 2: try to you know, I'm still connected with all the
Speaker 2: guys I try to get. You know, they're trying to
Speaker 2: do some things at the Coach Guard Historical Museum wherever
Speaker 2: that's that. That's been a little bit of a nightmare
Speaker 2: trying to get our piece in there. And I've always said, look,
Speaker 2: today the way things are, you don't have to wait
Speaker 2: for a museum to put your stuff in because most
Speaker 2: people see it online now, right, you can. That's why
Speaker 2: I started doing that Instagram. Literally, I started putting little
Speaker 2: pieces out there trying to get things together.
Speaker 6: I got a lot to do, but I was like, hey,
Speaker 6: get it out there where somebody can see it, right
Speaker 6: where somebody can kind of recognize what this was way
Speaker 6: back then, because nobody really knows. And if you've put
Speaker 6: the story right, you know, you see there's a lot
Speaker 6: of guys in there that did a lot of good
Speaker 6: work in there, from chiefs down to like you know us,
Speaker 6: you know, petty officers all the way up to the
Speaker 6: to the to the bosses that were in there fighting
Speaker 6: to do things right and trying to get things to
Speaker 6: a good spot. So, you know, I said, don't don't
Speaker 6: don't wait on something military wise. You know, it takes
Speaker 6: a long time for them to figure things out. So
Speaker 6: and you know, get it out there as much as
Speaker 6: you can. So there's some video on YouTube. You can
Speaker 6: find it.
Speaker 3: It's you know, some old videotape stuff that they put
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 2: But it's not like, you know, it's not up or
Speaker 2: anything like that. But you can do a good job
Speaker 2: at it if it comes out with for.
Speaker 1: Sure, I'm looking forward to seeing whatever you guys put together.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to talk about before
Speaker 1: we get going today. Is there anything that I didn't
Speaker 1: ask that you really would like to get into. No.
Speaker 2: I just thought that, you know, just exposing. And I
Speaker 2: said to the guys, who looks, there's just a hand
Speaker 2: few of us still out there, like twenty of us.
Speaker 2: I said, you try to expose it for yourself. And
Speaker 2: you know you got more than I do when you
Speaker 2: read the book. The one thing about the book, see
Speaker 2: that cover on the book. I think it was bob
Speaker 2: out of there. I think my old boss had asked
Speaker 2: me for some photos and I sent them some photos
Speaker 2: like that that that's a gray and white or black
Speaker 2: and white, but it's actually there's a there's a colored one.
Speaker 2: Those photos came out on our first tour, when everything
Speaker 2: dried up. We went out with our lieutenant. They said, hey,
Speaker 2: let's go take some photos. Move off out of here.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, remember these memories. You know, obviously
Speaker 2: had the old thirty five millimeter. You don't have like
Speaker 2: a you know, uh, you know, a phone to do
Speaker 2: it on. Remember these moments. So basically that's what we have.
Speaker 2: We got that photo out there and then in that book.
Speaker 2: We we never got interviewed, so me and Bob's team
Speaker 2: never got interviewed. So in that book, you hear things
Speaker 2: and you see things, but there's a lot of other
Speaker 2: things that are just missing in the whole thing. So
Speaker 2: and then I found out from the right from the
Speaker 2: from the from the author that basically, oh, I didn't
Speaker 2: have enough time and I didn't call you up. But
Speaker 2: they got the photos in, which was great. But if
Speaker 2: you look at cops also, there's a series of cops
Speaker 2: where they do I think they go to Guatemala. They're
Speaker 2: obviously in Bolivia, and they showed the firefight, the post firefight.
Speaker 3: That happened down in Bolivia, and basically it's it's it's
Speaker 3: the it's the coasts that are down there.
Speaker 2: I think the coasts even I think they were actually
Speaker 2: a couple of guys that got shot up, actually you know,
Speaker 2: gave them medical rendered medical service to them, you know,
Speaker 2: patched them up real quick. And I think that one too,
Speaker 2: threw off the coast guard. And then but it's on cops,
Speaker 2: you know, they they they froze everything. They basically said,
Speaker 2: you know, don't move the lab around, don't mess with anything.
Speaker 2: They'll fly. They fly. I think they flew don feron
Speaker 2: I think his name was. He was the head of
Speaker 2: the DA at the embassy. Cops flew down there and
Speaker 2: then they flew back out there. They went out to
Speaker 2: that lab and you can see the whole pieces on cops.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a pretty intense look, and you know
Speaker 2: the amount of weaponry that was down there and the
Speaker 2: lab that was down there. But those those coast seas
Speaker 2: deserved a lot of credit to because they were actually
Speaker 2: in the firefight. Like you know, I have there. One's
Speaker 2: not here anymore, that's kill Rodriguez. But when the other
Speaker 2: one is still around. He lives close down to me,
Speaker 2: so they're still around, Like that's that's amazing to me
Speaker 2: that they were able to get through that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: we were never really on tee or anything like that,
Speaker 2: and nobody really said much about it.
Speaker 1: I think we have a question from one of our viewers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, somebody asked, Gizeppie, what's the biggest or one of
Speaker 4: the biggest cases you worked on as a detective, like
Speaker 4: wired tap, mob case, something like that.
Speaker 3: Well, a double case, uh, mob, mob stolen.
Speaker 2: I think we were working on up. We were working
Speaker 2: on on on we started getting the stolen cars. So
Speaker 2: my background is like I could go down the street.
Speaker 2: I still do it now today. I can. I could
Speaker 2: figure out what the car is and why it's stolen
Speaker 2: because I can just see it from I have all
Speaker 2: these little cues that come up. So I started doing
Speaker 2: a lot of like stolen car stuff, like I would
Speaker 2: recover them, you know. I think my best was eleven
Speaker 2: in a month. And then when I got to that
Speaker 2: special unit, I had information on some stolen car stuff
Speaker 2: no one could figure out. This is when they had
Speaker 2: the uh, the emergency boxes in it where you could,
Speaker 2: you know, satellite and say, hey, you know, I'm stuck.
Speaker 2: What happens?
Speaker 3: They were removing all these boxes and I was trying
Speaker 3: to figure.
Speaker 2: Out, why did you remove these boxes?
Speaker 3: Well, little by literally I figured out.
Speaker 2: So I was dealing with Durango's, I was dealing with Hummers,
Speaker 2: I was dealing with Mercedes, I was dealing with the Lamborghinis.
Speaker 2: And I started putting things together within that system. One
Speaker 2: of my players showed up that was within the mob
Speaker 2: Philadelphia Mom and that's how that started out. So I
Speaker 2: had an auto theft case switching into a mob case
Speaker 2: at the same time. So I had the organized crime
Speaker 2: group with me and the group that out part and
Speaker 2: I mixed it together. I think we filled the garage
Speaker 2: up with like iin thirty or forty car that was stolen,
Speaker 2: and then I had like like ten motorcycles that they
Speaker 2: were just ripping.
Speaker 3: People left them right so on wiretaps.
Speaker 2: That's what It just grew to be huge. So I
Speaker 2: had to hold on to everything. I just couldn't. You know,
Speaker 2: once you take it, you know, you get a stolen car,
Speaker 2: you got to take it out of the system right now.
Speaker 2: The system goes back to the insurance company whatsoever. We
Speaker 2: couldn't do that because we didn't know if they were
Speaker 2: an insurance jobs, right. We had to hold onto everything.
Speaker 2: So it came to a point six months later where
Speaker 2: we had to make the arrest. I think at one
Speaker 2: point the attorney always, you know, says something to me.
Speaker 2: I think we started with the thirty four suspects, turns
Speaker 2: out to be nineteen at the end. One of the
Speaker 2: best moments is when I went up to Daytona, Florida,
Speaker 2: and we had to keep the cars hot because we
Speaker 2: didn't know who was involved in I think we drove
Speaker 2: three stolens down. I was on a car in a
Speaker 2: car that wasn't stolen because I was leaving the group
Speaker 2: and we still would. We also brought a stolen Danzie
Speaker 2: down or a scare of one of the two. We
Speaker 2: had to make sure that Florida Highward Control didn't come
Speaker 2: by us and try to run one of those tags
Speaker 2: or the boat number, because they would have been hot,
Speaker 2: trust me, they would. They would have had to stop
Speaker 2: on us. And you know, when I worked in that unit,
Speaker 2: guys have beers, you know, they a looved like cops.
Speaker 2: So we were taking everything back down to our warehouse
Speaker 2: where we had warehouse. But that case was amazing to
Speaker 2: me because it was just it just highlighted where we
Speaker 2: were at on things, for sure. So but I did
Speaker 2: some mob cases up in you know, New York Philly
Speaker 2: for sure. Always interesting, you know. So, but you know
Speaker 2: I still watch myself today, So I always watched the
Speaker 2: rear room mirror.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll be keeping my eye out to see you
Speaker 1: know what you and your former teammates put together on
Speaker 1: all of this. The book you know, not your Father's
Speaker 1: Coast Guard. You guys can find that on Amazon or
Speaker 1: wherever if you want to give it a read. Is
Speaker 1: there anywhere are you on why don't you plug your
Speaker 1: Instagram and send people there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, basically I got it under dat, you know,
Speaker 2: Drug Indition, Assist Team. It's uh, it's kind of brand new,
Speaker 2: and that's what I put on. That whole thing is
Speaker 2: drugging in addition and Assist Team D D period, I period,
Speaker 2: A period, T period, and then team. So that's it.
Speaker 2: So I put it out there. I'm trying to do
Speaker 2: more to it. So you know, I have a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff that that if I don't get it out there,
Speaker 2: it's probably gonna die with me.
Speaker 3: Nobody's ever going to see it.
Speaker 2: And that's what I tell the guys, like, hey, try
Speaker 2: to get it out there, so it's people can see
Speaker 2: it out there, because if you leave things like they
Speaker 2: don't see it, it's nobody gonna see it.
Speaker 3: So I would, hey, send it to me. I'll get
Speaker 3: it out there eventually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. I'm really glad that you're
Speaker 1: doing that. And again, Gioseppe, thank you for doing this interview.
Speaker 2: Really appreciate it, and I'm grateful and humbled that you
Speaker 2: reached out to me and super grateful that I can
Speaker 2: get this story out and I appreciate it very much.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, Man and everyone else, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this slice of
Speaker 1: Coast Guard history and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: Thank you,