How to Get Away with Murder in America: Drug Lords, Dirty Pols, Obsessed Cops, and the Quiet Man Who Became the CIA’s Master Killer

by Evan Wright

This is a story that the CIA will not want you to read. It will likely shake your faith in the highest levels of America’s national security establishment. And it will leave you feeling as if you are living not in the United States but in a seedy banana republic where there is no line between the good guys and the bad guys.

In “How to Get Away with Murder in America,” the celebrated journalist Evan Wright reveals the extraordinary story of Enrique “Ricky” Prado, an alleged killer for a major Miami drug trafficker who was recruited into the CIA. Despite a grand jury subpoena and a mountain of evidence unearthed by a federal task force, Prado was promoted into the agency’s highest echelons and charged with implementing some of the country’s most sensitive post-9/11 counterterrorist operations, including the agency’s secret “targeted assassination unit.” All while staying in close touch with his cocaine-trafficking boss and, evidence suggests, taking part in additional killings for him.

After Prado retired in 2004 at the rank of SIS-2—the CIA equivalent of a two-star general—he moved to a senior position at Blackwater, the private military contractor, where he continued to run the same, now-outsourced “death squad.” Contrary to government assurances that it was never actually activated, Wright reveals explosive testimony from one of the Blackwater assassins that Prado’s unit was indeed carrying out assigned killings. As a former military intelligence officer told Wright in 2011, “Private contractors are whacking people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA.”

In “How to Get Away with Murder in America,” Wright discloses never-before-seen federal investigation files and lays out a mind-boggling and ultimately damning indictment of Ricky Prado and the intelligence community that embraced and empowered him. It is the deeply disturbing story of a criminal case abandoned because of CIA intervention, political maneuvering, and possibly corruption. Its cast includes Mafia capos, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, former CNN host Rick Sanchez, and Prado’s longtime boss at the CIA and then Blackwater, J. Cofer Black, who is now a “special adviser” to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Wright also delivers a stunning portrait of Prado’s childhood friend Albert San Pedro, a.k.a. “the Maniac,” the drug lord whom he served for years as loyal bodyguard and enforcer, as well as their longtime nemesis Mike Fisten, the detective who began pursuing them more than two decades ago and still hopes to put them both in prison for murder.

There are many conspiracies in Wright’s story, all of them unsettling. Did the CIA knowingly hire a suspected murderer with strong ties to drug traffickers? Or was the agency a stooge, infiltrated by an underworld hood described by one investigator as “technically, a serial killer”?

“How to Get Away with Murder in America” is likely to have serious repercussions for the U.S. national security establishment. And it will shake to the core your conceptions of government and justice in America.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan Wright is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards and the author of the bestselling “Generation Kill,” “Hella Nation,” and “American Desperado,” which he co-wrote with Jon Roberts. His reporting has also been included in “The Best American Crime Writing.” He co-wrote the HBO series “Generation Kill,” based on his book.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, History, Crime, Politics, Espionage

130 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 24, 2012

About the author

That "author's photo" of me is an illustration done by my friend Hawk Krall, an awesome artist from Philly.

I had an odd path to writing which I describe in the first chapter of Hella Nation.

For the most part, my biography is contained in the books and articles I publish.

Reviews

[Steven Howes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is somewhat hard to follow given all the people and twists and turns involved. However it is very disturbing. It makes one wonder how an enforcer for a Florida drug lord can make it top the top levels of the CIA and be in charge of some of our governments most clandestine operations. There are some well-known government officials and public figures mentioned in this book. You will be surprised at some of the nefarious activities your government is involved in.

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indirectly mourning the possible end of his own young life, Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr.'s followed up his highly praised contributions on Dr. Dre's soundtrack single DEEP COVER and 1992's THE CHRONIC with his very own debut album featuring the song MURDER WAS THE CASE. While the track wasn't an overwhelming success on the Billboard US Hot 100 airplay charts for Snoop Dogg, his first record landed squarely at number one on the US Billboard 200. Indeed murdering the competition, the album sold almost a million copies in the first week and close to twenty million worldwide to date. Murder was also the case that that Evan Wright presents in HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA, though here it does not deal with street life, wasted youth and everyday reality in Long Beach, Califas. Instead, drug lords, dirty politicos, obsessed cops, crooked prosecutors, judges, and the quiet man who became the CIA's master killer in the covert world shake-up post 9/11 take the limelight.

As effortlessly stamped into the American public opinion with 1983's SCARFACE, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA (HTGAWMIA) lives in that Miami in the midst of a veritable gold rush, a city driven by the drug trade and its political class eminently corruptible. Local mayors, police officials, countless judges, county supervisors, and political hopefuls--all on the arm, sniffing for easy drug money while looking the other way. A time when the Reagan administration flouted the surreal narrative that Castro and other commies were responsible for America's drug woes, in part to justify to the American public the White House's wars in Central America. Nonetheless, South Florida was a smuggler's paradise and then a battlefront in Nancy Reagan's '80s War on drugs, some players bringing in between 100 and 480 kilos of cocaine every month. As the groovy 70s made way for the cash-grab 80s, a squabble of the kind that've been known to result in bloodshed amongst the criminal element caused the stepson of the legendary mobster Meyer Lansky to eat lead. The button man--Enrique "Ricky" Prado--the preferred killer of a Tony Montana clone Cuban drug kingpin throwing his weight around South Florida. HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA is the amazing story of Ricky Prado and his rise from the criminal underworld to hunting Bin Laden and into the top echelons of the national security establishment.

Among juicing bodybuilders, money launderers, influence peddlers, Medellin cartel cocaine wholesalers, bloodhound Cops, degenerate gamblers, and vengeful mafiosos, it takes something special to stand out. Cuban born and Mafia trained, Ricky Prado somehow ended up in the United States, making friends with the unofficial mayor of Hialeah and Miami crime boss Albert San Pedro, taking care of things since back in their High School days. This can-do attitude and ability to seamlessly fuse into the CIA's Central America operations landed the tried and true hitman Prado as a paramilitary officer in the Special Activities Division in 1982, the CIA's most secretive section. An intelligent opportunist, Ricky, an all-American hero, was thus involved with Oliver North and the Contras, doing jobs for the US government in the Nicaraguan guerilla war, America's dirty work that you will never hear about and that differed little from what he was alleged to have done for his long-time gangster friend in Miami. One good turn deserves another, priming this "hot head always fascinated with weapons" for pole position in a changing CIA in the 90s and the flood of money, murder, and mayhem that would follow 9/11. Simply, perfect for an intelligent, high-functioning sociopath who arranged his life to pursue the things that give him satisfaction.

Taking pages out of the Rudy Giuliani Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) playbook of organized crime prosecution, local Florida detectives ran face first into the CIA brick wall of denial and pushback. Fighting murder investigators tooth and nail, the word coming back was that people like Prado can't be indicted, that he is bad news and dangerous, liable to get those making inquiries likely to get killed. Differing vastly from the Iran Contra days, when billions of dollars in government contracts were at stake via covert programs that changed the character of American government and the Democracy itself after 2001, making it easier for the government to kill people without accountability, the CIA and later Blackwater protect their own. Running the "targeted assassination unit" for both CIA and Blackwater, Prado is the devil that got inside. A new type of mole, an agent with allegiances to the American criminal underworld, repping the US in embassies, commanded ops, oversaw Navy SEALs, FBI agents attached to the CTC, became friends with high ranking DEA officials, and hobnobbed with politicos, eventually garnering the George W. Bush Medal of Excellence in Counterterrorism among others. With all else failing, perhaps the FBI can make headway with the murder cases and close them, send people to prison and let justice be done. For America, hope in justice is a necessary kind of faith. Without it, what's left?

A good pre-curser to Toby Harnden's FIRST CASUALTY, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA showcases how the CIA was turned into a responsibility-free zone, letting the low-accountable killing apparatus grind on, lending deniable, covert, and private killers to any president willing to give the 'go-ahead'. HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA could've easily gone way beyond its 150 or so pages if it'd dealt more with Cofer Black, his role in the CIA/CTC and his influence over George W. Bush and changing national policies handling targeted assassinations and the powers of the CIA, leading to a 20 year path of revenge on those responsible (or complicit) for the ghastly 9/11 terrorist attacks. Cruising among the CTC, the JTTF and spouting jargon like woofer, failing up, guilty knowledge, 1001 Violation, Baker Act, and dining with devils, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA proffers that normal statues of limitation don't apply to RICO and that every fortune is made illegitimately. Casually name dropping Frank Sinatra, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Janet Reno, Mitt Romney, Robert Shapiro, Ollie North, Bob Graham, and even Barack Obama, HTGAWMIA insists that lots of prominent figures are somehow linked to the mob/cocaine trafficking or curious incidents of prosecutorial discretion (that ordinary folks never see the benefit of, given the high level of crimes in question). As such, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA is a must-read for every American, not necessarily for assistance with Scot-free homicide, but rather as an account of what is being done with the vast trove of tax dollars, all in the name of Democracy, national security, and with the tacit agreement of the voting public. Murder IS the case that HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA gives.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evan Wright automatically gets the benefit of the doubt from me because of his excellent GENERATION KILL. That being said, I was a bit disappointed with this book, even though it touches on an extraordinary change in the Executive Office mindset regarding government-sanctioned assassinations. I had a hard time keeping all the names straight as to who did what, which may out me more as a lazy reader than Wright being an overly-technical writer. Unfortunately, I was never drawn into the mind of the title subject, Ricky Prado. It may be that as a function of straight-forward journalism, Wright was limited as to how far he could go, given that all the evidence that hasn't been redacted is circumstantial. Undoubtedly, open record requests have been made and repeatedly rejected under the umbrella of National Security. Those requests likely will not be considered until after the 2012 general election. Speaking of which, it was interesting to learn that Romney's top foreign policy adviser is a former executive at Blackwater, which ties him to Prado. In summary, this book was an ambitious, thought-provoking bit of journalism which, hopefully, could soon become the topic of Congressional hearings.

[Byron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Evan Wright was working on a book with one of the main guys from Cocaine Cowboys, who hipped him to this other guy, who worked as muscle for the top Cuban mob boss down in Miami. He killed at least one guy that we know of, and who knows, he may have killed a shedload of people. Of course he went on to a very successful and lucrative career with the US military, the CIA, and the private military Bush Mengele and now Obama uses to illegally torture people. How come he wasn't thrown in prison and left there to rot way TF back in the '70s? How to Get Away With Murder in America breaks down how this mob boss he was affiliated had all kinds of politicians and law enforcement in his pocket. It can only speculate about how he got involved with the CIA, and what all he did while he was there. (Sounds like this dude was a sort of Corrupt Spy Zelig, involved with seemingly everything wrong the CIA is alleged to have done for the past three decades or so.) The part where the author tries to tie it all in with 9/11, Blackwater, the War on Terra and what have you, felt like he was reaching, but it was still kinda interesting to think about. For two bucks and some change, I got way more out of this than some books I've paid 10x as much for.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

a short but sweet and chilling masterpiece

James Ellroy once wrote, "Confluence. It's who you know and who you blow and how they're all connected."

I don't want to spoil much of this non-fiction short piece about the ways in which American justice mutates and contorts itself to cover its ass and in the name of its ruling political class's pet causes, but keep that quote in mind as you read this story of dopedealers and assassins. Evan Wright is a master reporter.

[Museveni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moral of the story: everyone's sleazy in Miami

[Adrian Bankhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Gg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historical facts finally see the light

I don't know if the information contained in this book will help me Sleep any better, but it sure paints a distrustful picture of the CIA!

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

a short nonfiction about Enrique Prado, a player in the 1970-80's Miami cocaine based criminal underworld who eventually joins the CIA and becomes a major part of its counter-terrorism squad. The narrative starts in Miami following Prado, and his boss Alberto San Pedro, as they build their criminal empire in the late 70's and early 80's. The allegations in the book are pretty amazing, basically San Pedro used his ill-gotten money to buy his way into the highest of Miami social circles, and buy his way out of any criminal investigations. If true (neither Prado, nor San Pedro were ever charged or convicted with any crimes, but the author does a pretty good job connecting the dots and making them seem guilty), just this part of the story is amazing and terrifying as San Pedro is able to run a major drug trafficking ring while all law enforcement knowingly turns a blind eye. HIs reach even extended to Aspen, where Prado allegedly blew up the car of the local coke dealer (a little local flavor!). However, the story takes quite a turn as Prado gets connected to the CIA through the anti-Castro movement. Prado eventually joins the CIA and becomes a major counter-terrorism agent. He now runs a legitimate private security firm. The story is shocking, and almost unbelievable, but the author does a good job connecting the dots through cited documents and interviews.

[Pasha Avicenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit confusing in some part because of the amount of people being ascribed in the case.

But, I picked up some abridged understanding of whose who in the story afterwards. Though I still don't understand what the fuck is the case is all about. But, I kind of find a smaller glimpse of what the writer tried to convey.

It definitely need extra pages of hundred of more to elaborate more toward the people involved and what the case is all about. But, overall it was an interesting story to cover.

A bit ridiculous how CIA willing to take in a Hitman as their main team, but hey it works. That's why I read this book anyway.

[George Gutowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

CIA, drugs, crime, Fidel Castro. Evan Wright attempts to connect the dots from raw street crime to high echelons of the CIA, Blackwater security ops and Mitt Romney security advisor team. CIA of course refuses to co-operate. Reality is there is probably more of this stuff going on than we know about. Of course we don't know about it the CIA keeps secrets.

CIA choose counter-terrorism and national security over solving street crime. Dirty dirty dirty. But what did you expect?

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a lot of bad people doing a lot of bad things in Miami. In the government. In the middle east. In central america. In the Caribbean. And, depressingly, they all seem to be intertwined. Man. This made me feel grimey. Crazy story, though. Worth a read. Basically a murderous thug associated with drug cartels in Miami somehow ended up high up in the bush administration CIA. Seriously. It's totally depressing.

[Priscilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a shocking story of a corrupt, drug infested Miami in the 70's. A Cuban gangster, and his alleged hit-man, who wound up working in the CIA, then moved to Blackwater. Wright brilliantly has backtracked, and has produced a hard-hitting story with compelling evidence. Hard-hitting and impossible to put down once you start.

[SA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dear Evan,

Please don't get a contract hit put on you, even in the pursuit of tightly plotted, horrifyingly fascinating journalism. I have no idea how you meet these people and get them to tell you their secrets, but please keep it from resulting in your untimely death.

Constantly hoping for your continued aliveness,
A Fan

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

 "Prado is the devil who got inside."

The real-life story about how a low-rent thug ended up in the CIA. Wright spins Prado's life into an astonishing read, even though it makes you want to vomit, for all kinds of reasons. Hey, guess what? Prado is still free. Awesome.

It's short, but it's also the best $3 read I've bought this year.

[Peter Knox · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn't like this book and thought that I would (which makes for 2 stars at best). It was slow, overly detailed, boring, and could never make me care for the characters, the plot, or the resolution of the case covered. But the writing was straight reportage, no flair, and comprehensive. It just didn't affect me as a reader.

[Jim Crocker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another eye-opener by a fantastic author. Evan Wright lifts all the veils on this one. He says it's all true and I believe him. So there! His earlier book about the Iraq invasion -- and he was there -- is another jaw dropper.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Boogie Man.

[Harry Rubenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mindblowing and outstanding piece of long form journalism. The story is so cinematic and so unbelievable that even after I finished and digested what I had just read, I still couldn't believe it. Frankly I'm surprised that this story didn't get more attention.

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book I have read on my completely on my phone, should tell you something. More worrisome than the individual in this book to me is the way our government seems to treat assassination so lightly. It rarely seems to go the way we expect.

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this type of stuff. Evan Wright does a fine job laying out the mystery of the CIA big-shot who also happens to be a South Florida drug-gang enforcer with some heavy indictments to his name. Short and sweet, this offering from Byliners is a fast, cheap thrill.

[david · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book/article. Unfortunately stories like this don't actually seem that incredible.
It is well researched and the author does point out testimony that seems suspect even when it supports his arguement.
A good use of the Kindle Single format

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solidly researched and well-written piece. Connecting the dots and "behind the scenes" cases of Enrique Prado and Albert San Pedro, demonstrating how truly jacked up our government is when it thinks no one is looking. Kindle single, well worth the $1.99.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are just civilians. these people operate on a whole different level.

[Michael Flanagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great piece of investigative writing. Evan Wright delivers us with yet another thought provoking and jaw dropping read.

[Manny Tzavlakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, quick read about the drug trade in South Florida.

[Daz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book , a nice companion piece to American Desperado.. Review is not too deep but I would recommend this book to any true crime fan.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and shows how America can be easily corrupted.

[Greg Otto · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best pieces of journalism I've ever read. Astounding story of deception, murder, and corruption, made all the more frightening by the fact that's it's real. An absolute must-read.

[Patricia Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eye opening account of America's covert wars at home and abroad, and the government's ambivalence regarding the agents & methods involved.

[keri. · Rating 4 out of 5]

nightmare fuel etc etc, but I'm super glad I read it.