Ian Frisch

Well, it's kind of serendipitous that this book comes out right in the middle of this new change within the Trump administration.

But, you know, we mentioned this in the book and, you know, Martin being the only FBI agent in history to infiltrate the Colombian drug cartel has said that from his point of view,

The war on drugs never really started.

But what we're seeing now, these aggressive overt actions, and as Martin explained to me, you know, if you hold a hammer, everything's a nail, you know, it sometimes doesn't work best to your advantage.

You have to do overt tactics and covert tactics, like what Martin did in this book.

So at first, in 1988, when Martin first became an FBI agent, he was tasked with going undercover and infiltrating the Medellin cartel, which at the time was run by Pablo Escobar, the most powerful drug lord of all time.

And he posed as a smuggler.

He was a Navy officer before, so he could chart a ship and fly a plane.

He was very comfortable on the ocean.

And it just so happened that those operational and technical abilities were also prized among the cartels because they needed to get as much cocaine as they could from Colombia into the United States.

Well, yeah, of course.

I mean, drug cartels care about one thing and that's profit and they're going to get it one way or the other.

Now, it's much easier to run a drug empire given the makeup of the world right now.

I mean, humans are consumption based creatures.

We like drugs.

to consume.

And in the world of drugs, obviously drugs are addictive, so it's a pretty good business model to be in if you're a drug cartel.

But even if they had no or decreased demand, I believe that the choke point is the money.

Again, cartels are profit-driven organizations, but if they can't get paid,

then their business crumbles.