The growth of the National Liberation Army or ELN, a sprawling guerilla force of 6,500 combatants shifting between Venezuela and Colombia, has hardly got any attention in the United States. Yet it’s just one of various explosive stories from the Colombia-Venezuela border, where spies, gangs, and insurgents are adjusting to the new political situation after U.S. special forces took out Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. 

Here I cut together video from a week reporting in Cúcuta and in the countryside north of the city, so you can see with your own eyes the dirt smuggling paths, border barrio of Venezuelan refugees, Colombian armored vehicles, contraband gasoline and more colorful scenes. It’s a CrashOut guerrilla podcast, but while it has a jagged edge style we go deeper than in the snappy cable news lives. 

Check out more at: www.crashoutmedia.com

Support the show

This was a crazy and freaky experience. Check out more on: www.crashoutmedia.com

Or support at: https://buymeacoffee.com/ioangrillo

Support the show

As U.S. military forces pile up in the Caribbean, pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to run, the obvious comparison comes up with the 1989 invasion of Panama to take out dictator Manuel Noriega. This makes perfect timing for a remarkable new book by journalist Cillian Dunne about Noriega through the eyes of his right hand man, and as Cillian says “attack dog,” Carlos Wittgreen. 

A young writer from Dublin, Cillian gained extraordinary access to Carlos and to his trove of documents, right before Carlos died a few months ago. The story of Noriega is fascinating and complex, how he was a CIA and DEA asset yet also worked with the Medellín Cartel, how he played off Washington and Cuba, and had a personal dispute with George H. W. Bush who took him down with a shower of bombs and rock music. Carlos is at the center of this drama while leading his own crazy life in the shadow world, getting training from the United States and Mossad and ending up in a Peruvian prison. Sometimes the world chooses you to tell these surreal stories, and it did with Cillian, who makes a great guest on the CrashOut Podcast and takes us down some jaw dropping avenues. 

You can find Cillian's book and info at: https://www.therighthandmanbook.com/ 

Check out more on Ioan Grillo and CrashOut Podcast at: www.crashoutmedia.com

Support the show

Joaquín Guzmán López, the son of El Chapo, pled guilty to drug trafficking in a federal court in Chicago on Monday, and signed a plea agreement in which he confessed to kidnapping Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada (referred to as Individual A) and flying him to the United States to hand into U.S. justice. 

Any reader of CrashOut knows we have been deep into this story all the way (check out the archive), and I break down what was revealed with Joaquín Jr’s confession. The saga of the Mayo kidnapping itself is coming to an end, but the war it provoked in Sinaloa rages on as bad as ever. 

Find out more at: www.crashoutmedia.com

Support the show

It was tough day in Mexico City on Saturday of protests, riots, vandalism, and arrests that highlighted some difficult divisions in Mexico. I went into report and got a good dose of gas myself. Here is the story. (Above for the video or below for the audio). 

For more info, go to: www.crashoutmedia.com

Support the show

It's hard to keep up with the pace of U.S. missile strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. When I began recording this it was 10 hits and 43 dead since September When I finished the edit a day later, it was 14 and 57 dead. This is new territory in the war on drugs. Or is it all about regime change in Venezuela? I break it down in this episode of CrashOut Podcast. 

For more info, go to: www.crashoutmedia.com 

Support the show

The U.S. military on Sept. 2 used a missile to hit a boat of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members accused of moving drugs in international waters and killed the eleven people on board. This follows the designation of Tren de Aragua as terrorists and a directive by President Donald J. Trump for the military to go after such “narco-terrorist” targets. While it may not be the top story in the news, it’s a major development that takes us into new rough waters in the drug war but it could also be the build up to a further U.S. attack on Venezuela. I break it down in this video, question if it went down as Trump said it did, and look at where this leads. 

For more info go to www.crashoutmedia.com

Support the show

Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada pleads guilty in New York. 

For more info, go to www.crashoutmedia.com

Support the show

The Medellin Cartel rose in the 1980s by flooding the United States with cocaine, providing dope to dance floors in Miami all the way to crack houses in Los Angeles. Forbes magazine once estimated the tidal wave of powder made the cartel’s top trafficker Pablo Escobar $9 billion and its No. 2, Carlos Lehder, another $2.7 billion. While these numbers are likely major over-estimates of how much individual narcos actually keep, the cocaine trade certainly served up billions of dollars to Colombia, fueling an armed conflict involving the cartels, army, leftist guerillas and right wing paramilitaries that tore the South American nation apart and left a lot of families weeping. 

Escobar gained an infamy alongside Al Capone and later El Chapo as the most well-known mobsters of all time. But Lehder was also a fascinating character. He personally piloted planes and had his own private island in The Bahamas, which he used as a trampoline to bounce blow state side. The son of a German, he was portrayed by Netflix Narcos with a swastika tattoo as a Neo-Nazi narco. And he went on to become the star witness against the Panamanian dictator General Noriega, who was a CIA agent and an ally of Medellin Cartel before the U.S. invasion of Panama took him down in 1989. 

So when I recently got a message that I would have a chance to interview Lehder, who is now free and back in Colombia after a 33-year stint in prison, I scrambled to get there as quick as I could. The man I discovered was more humble and less boastful than you might expect, but then decades in a cell including four years in solitary, changes you. He has written a memoir of “Life and Death of the Medellin Cartel,” which you can find here and provides a revealing first-hand account to understand the period. 

We spoke for hours in what I believe is Carlos’ first English language interview. He goes into fascinating details about how the Medellin Cartel really functioned, its relationship with guerillas and paramilitaries, and how they owned governments and supplied the U.S.-backed Contra rebels. He also gets personal about what years in solitary does to your brain. I’m proud to say this episode show cases an important testimony that helps understand the history of the eighties in the Americas, while its also intriguing to see the man behind the myth. Get your tea or beer, zap it on and soak it up.

For more information and to support, go to www.crashoutmedia.com 

Support the show

On Friday, Mexican troops shot dead Jorge Humberto Figueroa, a paramilitary commander of the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. Here is my update news report. For more info and to support the show, check out: www.crashoutmedia.com

Support the show