03x04 - Chasing the Dragon: Narco Jihad

[bunniefuu]

MAN (in local language): We are all farmers here.

People have grown poppy here since before I was born.

It's nothing new.

People don't like the poppy.

You have to grow it because there's no money here.

♪ ♪

It takes about six months to grow poppy,

then you can harvest it.

We sell it to local buyers.

They come here to collect the opium

and take it to places where it is then processed.

♪ ♪

Local buyers know the people

running the laboratories where the opium is sent for processing.

We have every part of this process covered,

from growing it to selling it.

♪ ♪

NEWSCASTER: Shake this square world and blast off for Kicksville.

RICHARD NIXON: America's public enemy number one

is drug abuse.

MAN : Heroin destroys everything.

MAN : Prescribing pain pills created huge numbers of addicts.

(crowd chanting "Sacklers lie, people die")

MAN : Opium is cash,

it's like you're growing bills on the bush.

MAN : Crime and drug abuse go hand in hand.

It's like peanut butter and jelly.

KAMALA HARRIS: It's now an understanding

that the w*r on drugs was an abject failure.

MAN : You have to stop and ask yourself,

"How did we get here?"

♪ ♪

(sirens blaring)

NEWSCASTER: Take a look at the highlights for today,

New York City, beautiful day here.

degrees today. Saint Louis ...

JEFF HIGGINS: September , , started like every other day.

I was at the gym

when I heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

So I went into the other room in the gym, and I watched it on TV.

NEWSCASTER: It's : here in New York.

We understand that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.

(plane whooshing)

(loud thudding)

HIGGINS: And then, the second plane hit the tower,

and I knew we were looking at terrorism.

(sirens blaring)

As a law enforcement officer,

I just wanted to get there as quickly as possible,

to help in whatever way I could.

(sirens blaring)

I jumped in my car and I put on the red light,

and I sped to Manhattan as quickly as I could.

(sirens blaring)

As I was coming around the bend on the West Side Highway,

one of the NYP Detectives said

that-- that the tower was gone.

MAN (over radio): I'm at the North End and Fifth.

I'm watching one of the towers being attacked.

MAN (over radio): Holy (bleep).

MAN (over radio): This is mad! Run! (indistinct)

HIGGINS: So we were driving into this huge bellowing cloud of smoke

with people running around...

(sirens blaring)

...just in total fear, running through the streets.

(people screaming)

I carried bodies out of debris.

I actually stood there in the rubble,

looking at the hole in the sky where the Towers had once stood,

and I vowed I was going to avenge us.

I was going to use my investigative skills

to go after the-- the t*rrorists who had-- who had done this.

♪ ♪

My name is Jeffery James Higgins.

I was a DEA agent for years.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We cannot know every turn this battle will take,

yet we know our cause is just,

and our ultimate victory is assured.

My fellow Americans, let's roll.

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: I knew Afghanistan had the highest concentration

of terror groups in the world.

And it was also the hub of all opiate trafficking in the world.

SOLDIER: Let's get out of here.

HIGGINS: So I suspected that there was a connection

between terrorism and narcotics trafficking.

I'd been trying to get into counter-terrorism

for two and half or three years.

But I hadn't had much luck.

And then, DEA re-opened its office in Afghanistan.

And, of course, I jumped at it.

Flying in between the mountains in the Hindu Kush,

the mountains are gorgeous

and there's overwhelming natural beauty.

♪ ♪

And then we landed, and the city of Kabul opened up before us,

and the smell of feces and dust filled the cabin.

It's horrible air quality. There's smog.

You have this cacophony of sounds.

After years of trying to get involved,

I was literally going to the ground zero for narco-terrorism.

The DEA office in Afghanistan was a two-man operation,

with myself and John O'Rourke.

JOHN O'ROURKE: Kabul in the early days really was the city of the wild west.

We had no infrastructure.

The comm equipment wasn't set up.

We had sporadic electricity.

No g*ns.

No case files. No informant files.

Everything had to be created from scratch.

And we came to realize

that no one wanted to talk about the drug problem.

SOLDIER : They're such pretty flowers.

So colorful.

SOLDIER : Right.

O'ROURKE: The military was very focused

on military objectives and counter-terrorism.

And they were told,

if they were walking through a poppy field while on patrol,

just leave it alone.

They did not want to get involved in the drug business.

HIGGINS: I had meetings with high-ranking people

in the intelligence community,

who were arguing that there was no nexus between drugs and terrorism,

even though all of DEA's cases generated in Afghanistan were showing

that the Taliban were being funded by drugs.

(indistinct radio chatter)

SOLDIER (off screen): Let's go.

HIGGINS: So we had to start by working

with Afghan Counter Narcotics police officers.

-WALEED AHMADI: The test came positive. -HIGGINS (off screen): Okay.

AHMADI: My name is Waleed Ahmadi,

and I'm a former officer with

Counter-Narcotics Police of Afghanistan.

HIGGINS: He was the one Afghan police officer

that we would almost always take with us

to have the authority to be able to do what we were doing.

AHMADI: We jointly opened an investigation

and we were debriefing multiple sources.

HIGGINS: We were trying to figure out who were the major players,

who were the t*rrorists,

who were the drug traffickers,

how were they working together,

how was the drug trade actually working in Afghanistan.

And so we started developing informants.

O'ROURKE: And what we were hearing was,

"Hey, you need to go talk to this gentleman,

and he will tell you about this person."

And you would hear different names.

But, repeatedly, from various sources, we heard one name.

And it became readily apparent,

as we started to gain more and more intelligence,

that this guy really was

one of the kingpins of kingpins in Afghanistan.

HIGGINS: It would take years of investigation

before the full breadth of his organization was understood.

His name was Haji Bagcho.

♪ ♪

When we would try to get informants to give us information about him,

people would physically shake, talking about him.

♪ ♪

MUHAMMAD: In my childhood,

there was nothing for fun.

Nothing for entertainment.

Everybody was scared,

not only me, everybody.

The whole population in Afghanistan

was scared.

We were seeing in the bazaar,

the Taliban captured thieves,

and they were announcing on the loudspeaker,

"We are punishing them."

They just k*lled them.

We were not living like humans.

Many, many times I saw people,

they were beheading them

with knives.

It was happening every week.

I'm totally against these people.

In my mind, they are not human,

they're a different kind of creature.

♪ ♪

Bagcho would pass in front of our shop,

and many times, turning to my shop for a drink.

In that market,

the drug dealers were in front of me every day.

I was seeing them every day.

But nobody was more powerful than Bagcho.

Many, many times, I was thinking this guy is a big drug dealer,

and by myself, I would talk with him all the time.

"Hey, how's your business?"

"Very good, what are you doing?"

So I've known him for a long time.

HIGGINS: We started developing informants.

So we'd bring in whoever we could,

who wanted to tell us something about the criminal underworld

that was in Afghanistan.

And that's what eventually led us to Muhammad.

MUHAMMAD: When the Americans came,

everything changed, but changed very soon.

I was feeling good when they came to Afghanistan.

It was a duty of every Afghan to stop the Taliban.

Hitting the drug dealers was the only way that I could harm them.

Also, I felt it was my part to help take this poison from the world.

I didn't go to the local government because I don't trust them, so...

I went to the DEA.

HIGGINS: This area that we were in, in Nangarhar,

it was a constant state of warfare on some level.

And people like Muhammad were sick of it.

He didn't like the Taliban.

He really just wanted to live a normal life.

MUHAMMAD: Jeff Higgins cared about our safety.

He was very honest,

and he was very loyal

to his country, to his job.

And I said to myself,

"You are the right guy."

HIGGINS: Bagcho was a target that we had looked at for years.

So when we finally found somebody who could talk directly to him,

that was exciting.

He was looking to help us,

but he understood, by providing evidence

against the most powerful heroin trafficker in the world,

he was gonna put himself and his family in jeopardy.

♪ ♪

MUHAMMAD: Bagcho is,

he was the president

of the drugs,

the drug business.

He was building labs in the mountains.

He had more than labs.

And in each lab, to people were working.

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: Bagcho had heroin production happening in labs,

big labs down in the deserts in Helmand and Kandahar.

But also in the north in places like Kunduz and Badakhshan.

And in the east in Nangarhar, which was a very criminal, uh, province.

That's where Bagcho was from.

MUHAMMAD: In the mountains,

the government can't reach them.

So where the government can't reach

there is government of Taliban.

Bagcho was a big income source for the Taliban.

The Taliban gives protection to his drugs

to get them safely out of Afghanistan,

and they keep Bagcho safe.

They give him security.

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: Afghanistan was the first time that DEA ever operated in a w*r zone.

It meant we didn't have freedom of movement.

Leaving a base was exceedingly dangerous.

And every time we left the wire, we were under threat of attack.

(b*llet ricochets)

SOLDIER : Oh, (bleep).

SOLDIER : (indistinct) Fire back!

(machine g*n firing)

JOHN MANNA: DEA created the FAST team

because... they needed a way to beef up our operations

so they could operate in a military environment.

Our job was to find a lab and go smash it.

I was a former Marine.

We had former Army, Navy, Air Force.

We had two Seals on my team.

My name is John Manna, and I was with DEA for over years.

FAST stands for Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Team.

One of the nicknames for the FAST team was the Fake a*s Seal Team.

We did joke about it, but we were some capable guys.

NEWSCASTER: In its own surge,

the DEA has increased agents here tenfold in the last year.

HIGGINS: The FAST teams gave us the weaponry and the training we needed

to operate in a w*r zone,

in places where carrying a GL*CK handgun and a shotgun wasn't enough.

We had military-grade weapons,

and we trained with the entire Special Operations community.

SOLDIER: Let's go!

♪ ♪

MANNA: We hit labs in Helmand valley

on the east side of Afghanistan up in the mountains.

Almost every lab was controlled by Haji Bagcho.

As soon as you're there,

you're starting to wire it up to-- to blow it up.

Because you-- you can't be sitting around waiting,

because that's giving the Taliban time to go ahead and hit you.

The labs, they all looked the same.

You're gonna see a lot of -gallon drums filled with water,

you're going to see some opium,

what they call the press, that's used to press out the water.

You could probably put together an Afghan heroin lab

for under $.

Though the labs were very rudimentary,

they could take opium

and turn it into something that's very, very valuable.

Probably $, a kilo if it got to the States.

♪ ♪

I've probably been to...

or labs at least.

And we realized you're not fixing the problem

by just destroying the lab.

You're-- You're not.

You-- You're disrupting.

Temporarily disrupting.

HIGGINS: We'd been hitting labs and things that were affiliated with him.

We needed to do something more.

You have to go to the source.

You have to cut the head off the snake.

I needed to change focus and try to arrest Bagcho.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: We'd known where Bagcho lived for several years.

And what we found in that part of Nangarhar

were, most of the police chiefs were working with the Taliban

and working with the drug traffickers.

In fact, they were even transporting drugs in police vehicles.

♪ ♪

NEWSCASTER: Historic days in Afghanistan.

Millions of people have taken a giant step on the long road to democracy.

The country's first direct presidential election

has taken place.

Interim leader Hamid Karzai is expected to be the winner.

MUHAMMAD: When Hamid Karzai government became the new government,

Bagcho went to a minister and he said,

"I am Bagcho, do you know me?"

and he said, "Yes, I know you."

And he's taking some money with him as a gift

and making him his partner.

"Anywhere I need you, you help me, I help you."

So Bagcho bought government people with his money.

HIGGINS: Haji Bagcho, with his level of influence and power,

is incredibly dangerous,

and was a huge influence on the corruption of Afghanistan

and Afghan officials.

The problem was what to do with t*rrorists, drug traffickers,

and other criminals that you arrest.

If you put them into the Afghan judicial system,

they would often bribe somebody and get released.

Eventually, people started to notice the nexus between drugs and terrorism

because the evidence was overwhelming.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: The terrorism feeds on the drug trafficking

and-- and fuels them and funds the, uh, the t*rrorists.

So this is a link that we absolutely have to break.

♪ ♪

BUSH: The bill gives law enforcement new tools

to combat threats to our citizens

from international t*rrorists to local drug dealers.

HIGGINS: I was really pleased.

The law was a huge new tool that we had

to go after t*rrorists.

♪ ♪

My partner and I were staying at the Jalalabad airfield,

and it was a forward operating base in the Nangarhar province,

where we were able to go out into the province

which is the heart of heroin trafficking in eastern Afghanistan.

It was also the home base of Haji Bagcho.

And we needed evidence to show that he was engaged in this trafficking.

And when you're going after the head of a major organization,

getting someone who can talk to him on tape or on video is-- is huge.

So we had Muhammad make a series of phone calls directly to Haji Bagcho,

claiming that he wanted to buy large amounts of heroin

to get it out of Afghanistan.

♪ ♪

The most pure heroin is known as "Spin Moll"

which is white stuff.

Spin is the-- is the heroin that we were looking for,

and that is sent to other countries.

AHMADI: The informer was tasked to call Bagcho

on a control call.

(line ringing)

HIGGINS: He was just pale.

Like, he was so scared, he was pale,

and he was shaking when he dialed the phone.

(phone ringing)

MUHAMMAD: And then I call him.

"Hi, how are you?"

The best thing is he recognized me.

(over phone) Haji Saheb, I am going to discuss something with you.

There is a Punjabi man.

He is an old friend of mine.

HAJI BAGCHO (over phone): Yes.

HIGGINS: When we first heard, uh, Haji Bagcho's voice on that call,

we got pretty excited.

Because this was as close as anyone had been able to get to Bagcho

in years of investigation.

MUHAMMAD (over phone): He came here and told me he has connections.

He needs some stuff, the "spin."

BAGCHO (over phone): Okay. Does he want it here or any other place?

Where does he want it?

MUHAMMAD (over phone): He made his connection in Kabul.

He will transport it to America.

BAGCHO (over phone): Okay, we will talk about it.

AHMADI: Jeff told me that's a great move.

Our big guy has agreed to sell the drugs.

HIGGINS: So we had some evidence directly from Bagcho,

but what-- what we needed was actual drugs.

Because to-- to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt,

you really need the product.

So our next step, pick up the kilos of heroin

from Bagcho's residence

in the belly of the beast.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: We have Bagcho's voice recorded, setting up the deal.

Then he arranged a time for Muhammad

to go and pick up the two-kilogram sample

from Bagcho's residence.

My partner and I got into our Afghan gear.

Just went out in a couple of vehicles.

My partner took him in a bus and I covered 'em in another car,

and drove him near Bagcho's residence,

let him out on foot,

and we watched him go to Bagcho's residence.

MUHAMMAD: I know that it's risky.

If he knows, he will k*ll all my family.

That was the scariest thing.

HIGGINS: Bagcho lived in Markoh Village in eastern Nangarhar.

It was an area that was just infested with Taliban.

HIGGINS: Not only were we worried, is the deal going to happen,

but we have the source who's trusting us to keep him safe.

Muhammad went to Bagcho's house and met someone at the residence.

If Bagcho knew Muhammad was working for us,

they would k*ll him.

So I told Muhammad that we would protect him,

and if anything happened, we could rush in and rescue him.

MUHAMMAD: So this thing made me very strong because

it's very hard

to put your hand in the mouth of an angry lion.

He has, in his compound,

guards and everything, with g*ns inside.

The guy came and he gave me the drugs

and I came out,

and Jeff was waiting for me outside.

HIGGINS: Muhammad walked away.

And we surveilled him to make sure that nobody was watching him.

And when we had the opportunity, we picked him up off of the street.

♪ ♪

We believed we had enough evidence

for a prosecutable case in the United States.

But we still wanted to execute a search warrant at Bagcho's residence

to try to get more information,

but also to try to arrest Bagcho.

♪ ♪

Bagcho lived in a very large residence,

think like a medieval castle.

Very tall walls around it.

Big open courtyards.

And this area was a-- was a Taliban-controlled area.

AHMADI: We had the search warrant and arrest warrant on hand,

and everything was ready to go.

So we put the operation together

and we rolled down to his compound.

HIGGINS: As we were flying in,

I was on the headset in my-- in the helicopter, it was a Chinook,

and I heard one of the pilots say,

"There's a man running out of the back of the residence."

I was like, "Son of a g*n,"

because we knew that was going to happen.

When we landed, we, you know, assaulted the residence.

SOLDIER: All right, get in, get in, get in!

HIGGINS: We secured it, there were a bunch of people inside.

Everyone got handcuffed.

AHMADI: It was not just Bagcho in that house,

his brother was living in that house,

his son was living in that house,

his wives and children.

HIGGINS: I went to that back door, and Bagcho had run out of his shoes.

His two shoes were like this out-- outside the back door,

where he'd literally run out of his shoes.

So, yes, Bagcho was there, Bagcho fled.

AHMADI: There is an open border

between Afghanistan and Pakistan

on the east.

A lot of drug traffickers in that region,

they can cross the border

within walking distance.

MUHAMMAD: To Pakistan, there are

a lot of ways through the mountains.

And Bagcho,

he left the country.

He escaped to Pakistan.

♪ ♪

MAN : I guess you could say I'm the hood bank.

I'm, basically, the accountant for my organization.

Holding that crown for being the most responsible with the money.

Make sure everything gets back in one piece.

♪ ♪

Some say I have the easy job, just collecting the money,

but we got the hard part.

We got what everybody wants.

♪ ♪

This is one of our little hideouts.

Everything that moves around is through this.

My guys right here have done it all,

from gas tanks to false floors,

airbags.

MAN : He's about to be done. He's, like, on the last weld.

Gonna go straight to the truck. Gonna close it up.

Right there,

in that little spot,

we fit over $, in that one spot.

In one truck like this, there could be $ million.

MAN : There, it's perfect.

They both fit good.

A tough week at the border where it's hard to get stuff across,

maybe $,, $,.

When it's smooth, you are talking millions weekly.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: In Afghanistan, they use a monetary system known as Hawala.

Hawala is an informal banking system.

So, hawaladars are people who work within the Hawala system,

who accept money and give money.

And Haji Bagcho, his hawaladar was a guy named Zahir Shah.

AHMADI: Zahir Shah was doing all the drug dealings

for Haji Bagcho.

And he was his money guy, his financial guy.

HIGGINS: What we wanted was the documentary evidence

to show the trail of money.

So we ex*cuted a search warrant

to try to seize the ledgers from the hawaladar.

AHMADI: And we raided Haji Bagcho's hawaladar.

HIGGINS: We had to get in, execute the search warrant,

seize what evidence we could and get out as quickly as possible.

The longer westerners were present,

the more danger there was of a Taliban attack

but also just from crowds.

Huge crowds would form, and they would get violent.

AHMADI: We arrested Zahir Shah.

And also we seized the entire ledger books.

It was all the drug dealing,

records and everything was in those books.

HIGGINS: These ledgers showed just massive amounts of drug trafficking.

♪ ♪

Based on the ledgers that we had,

we could prove that that's what he sold.

So this was the biggest heroin trafficker in the world,

someone who directly supported narco-terrorism.

So honestly, there was just a-- a sense of relief.

We had the evidence that-- that we needed,

I believe, for a successful prosecution.

♪ ♪

MUHAMMAD: Pakistan is really very important for Bagcho.

Because Pakistan government is very, very corrupted.

So Bagcho bought a lot of government people.

HIGGINS: Pakistan had arrested Bagcho a couple of times

and, you know, let him go.

So he'd been arrested and released, and then he'd been arrested again.

♪ ♪

This time, when he'd been arrested,

Pakistan agreed to turn him over to the Afghan government.

(sirens blaring)

I was thrilled and, quite frankly, a little surprised.

(laughing) I-- I-- I didn't think

Pakistan would ever turn him over if they had him,

but they did.

♪ ♪

He's, you know, a little old man,

incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous.

AHMADI: It was good, I was sitting right next to him.

We were waiting for the helicopters to come and pick us up.

HIGGINS: Ideally, we wanted Bagcho to co-operate with us,

and then use his testimony and his evidence

to help charge Taliban commanders and-- and corrupt officials.

But his defense attorney kept telling us

there was no way we would get him out of Afghanistan,

so he wouldn't let Bagcho cooperate.

AHMADI: He was very happy and--

He had like

a smiley face.

Most definitely, he was thinking that

if he is being transported to Kabul,

he can throw millions of dollars and buy himself out of jail,

and he will be back in business.

That's what he was thinking.

So that's why he was so relaxed.

HIGGINS: We didn't know

if the Afghan government would let us take him.

And there were some tense, tense moments.

But, eventually, the Afghan government agreed

that it would be better if he was tried in the United States.

♪ ♪

NEWSCASTER: Handcuffed and surrounded by agents

from the Drug Enforcement Administration,

Haji Bagcho landed at Andrews Air Force Base

early this morning.

HIGGINS: But until you can actually go into a US court and convict him,

we-- we weren't satisfied or-- or comfortable.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

MUHAMMAD: In or ,

some people got suspicious about me.

One night, I received a call, and he said,

"All the Taliban of your district are waiting for you,

and trying to capture you."

My life was really, really dangerous because

when you got suspicious, you are done.

♪ ♪

(sirens blaring)

NEWSCASTER: Joining me now is a member of the DEA team

that hunted down the world's biggest heroin trafficker,

former Supervisory Agent, Special Agent, Jeffrey Higgins.

Jeffrey, thank you for coming on.

Give us a sense of-- of what it took to capture this man

who, by all accounts, was a criminal mastermind.

HIGGINS: Well, he was the most prolific heroin trafficker

and overall drug dealer in the world.

(sirens blaring)

So the trial itself was sort of a logistical nightmare.

We had all these Afghans who needed translators.

They needed security because of the level of this case.

I was holding my breath

when Muhammad walked into the courtroom

and took the stand where he was facing Bagcho,

because this is the moment of truth.

He had to identify Bagcho, he had to describe him and point to him.

And I know how terrifying that must've been.

MUHAMMAD: He k*lled people all over the world with poison.

He is a k*ller.

So that gave me the energy to stand in front of him

and testify.

HIGGINS: I sat at the prosecution table with the-- the two attorneys

and their-- and the prosecution team.

I testified a number of times in the case

and it-- it was exhausting.

it was around the clock.

The corroborating evidence we had with the phone calls,

where we had Bagcho's voice recorded setting up the deal,

and the ledgers from the hawaladar.

But juries are unpredictable,

you-- you never know what they're thinking.

♪ ♪

MUHAMMAD: He was an elephant and

me, I'm nothing to him but a mosquito.

But when a mosquito gets inside an elephant's nose,

that small mosquito bothers the big elephant.

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: Bagcho's organization distributed heroin to countries

including Japan, and China, the United States,

like, all over the globe.

So, it was-- it was very satisfying after all this work

to finally get this nexus target.

Everything I did in Afghanistan after September th,

was to fulfill my vow to go after t*rrorists

and the people that had targeted our country.

So I was incredibly relieved when I-- when I heard the verdicts.

NEWSCASTER: The fall of Afghanistan.

Taliban fighters inside the Presidential Palace.

Taliban declaring it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

WOMAN: Please, help, help, help!

NEWSCASTER: Taliban taking a little more than a week

to seize control of almost the entire country.

(people clamoring)

♪ ♪

HIGGINS: I think it's horrible.

I think it's a horrible judicial decision.

We know that-- that he distributed at least , kilograms of heroin,

and he was the most prolific heroin trafficker ever

to be prosecuted in the United States.

And so, for him not to get a life sentence for that,

I think is a travesty.