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ja_hopkins's review
4.0
Tom Chandler’s first-hand account of the war on drugs is an extremely interesting read. Largely focused on the late 90’s, he describes in vivid detail the astonishing lengths the cartels went to in order to move their product to Europe.
Chandler arrives in Bogotá soon after the death of Pablo Escobar, and the Cali cartel has become the leading supplier of cocaine. His task is simple – infiltrate some of the most powerful and dangerous criminal gangs in the worth and stop them. Considering the cartels ambivalent attitude to violence – going as far as bombing a passenger plane in the hope of killing a presidential candidate – it was a dangerous assignment.
Chandler operates as the Drug Liaison Officer (DLO) working for what was the HMCE. One of the biggest problems he faces is who to trust – the cartels can pay practically any amount of money in bribes, and if you refuse, you are killed. Against this backdrop, he takes us through the process of recruiting informants, surveillance and the training they offered to the local law enforcement agencies.
We are taken through the details of the Bogotá airport mafia who controlled the main airport, the speedboats that traverse the Caribbean. We learn about teams planting drugs in legitimate cargo containers, hiding places aboard ships (and aircraft) and the way shipping owners change names and paintwork to hide the identity of motherships – huge bulk transporters of cocaine to Europe. During his time in Colombia, Chandler sets up a network of agents and the investigations he is involved in net hundreds of tons of drugs with billions.
This is a really well written, non-fiction book that sometimes almost reads like fiction – the ingenuity of the smugglers, the constant action-reaction to new law enforcement techniques. The level of detail is impressive, and I really enjoyed this book. The authors closing thoughts on the war on drugs are interesting and not quite what I expected.
Chandler arrives in Bogotá soon after the death of Pablo Escobar, and the Cali cartel has become the leading supplier of cocaine. His task is simple – infiltrate some of the most powerful and dangerous criminal gangs in the worth and stop them. Considering the cartels ambivalent attitude to violence – going as far as bombing a passenger plane in the hope of killing a presidential candidate – it was a dangerous assignment.
Chandler operates as the Drug Liaison Officer (DLO) working for what was the HMCE. One of the biggest problems he faces is who to trust – the cartels can pay practically any amount of money in bribes, and if you refuse, you are killed. Against this backdrop, he takes us through the process of recruiting informants, surveillance and the training they offered to the local law enforcement agencies.
We are taken through the details of the Bogotá airport mafia who controlled the main airport, the speedboats that traverse the Caribbean. We learn about teams planting drugs in legitimate cargo containers, hiding places aboard ships (and aircraft) and the way shipping owners change names and paintwork to hide the identity of motherships – huge bulk transporters of cocaine to Europe. During his time in Colombia, Chandler sets up a network of agents and the investigations he is involved in net hundreds of tons of drugs with billions.
This is a really well written, non-fiction book that sometimes almost reads like fiction – the ingenuity of the smugglers, the constant action-reaction to new law enforcement techniques. The level of detail is impressive, and I really enjoyed this book. The authors closing thoughts on the war on drugs are interesting and not quite what I expected.
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