Narco Wars: The Gripping Story of How British Agents Infiltrated the Colombian Drug Cartels

by Tom Chandler

Tom Chandler arrived in Bogotá at the height of the cocaine boom. Pablo Escobar lay dead, the Cali Cartel had taken over much of the global supply, and an avalanche of coke was poised to hit Europe. Now the British government wanted Chandler and his team to do the infiltrate the most powerful crime syndicates on earth and stop their drug shipments. It was a perilous assignment. The cartel bosses operated like a lethal multi-national, with armies of hitmen and myriad spies in ports, airports, police stations and government offices. Their intelligence systems flushed out turncoats and traitors, and they ruthlessly exterminated their enemies. Yet Chandler, an HM Customs investigator fluent in Spanish, knew he could only succeed by recruiting local informants, and went out into the field to find them. Within four years he had a network of fifty agents buried deep inside the trafficking organisations. The result was unprecedented. Their intel led to the arrest of hundreds of narcos and to the seizure of 300 tonnes of drugs, worth a staggering $3 billion. Chandler's web disrupted the Bogotá mafia, who controlled the main airport and boasted they could put anything on a plane, from drugs to bombs; penetrated the go-fast crews who raced coke-laden speedboats to the transit station of Jamaica; dismantled the 'rip-on' teams who smuggled through the coastal ports; and identified the so-called motherships, the largest method of bulk transit ever discovered. He faced appalling risks. Treacherous stool pigeons worked for both sides, and some of his Colombian law-enforcement colleagues were abducted, tortured and killed. Chandler too faced a grave threat when the crime lords learned he was responsible for a string of interdictions. Yet he persisted, driven to continue with the greatest series of sustained seizures ever made, until he finally burned out and his tour of duty came to an end. Two of his best sources were subsequently murdered, and his bosses dropped the entire overseas informant programme, with dire consequences. Narco Wars is an unflinching story of danger fear and stress, and of the tradecraft and unsung heroism of the agents and their handlers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Crime

311 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 11, 2018

Reviews

[Rog the Jammy Dodge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating account as to how the UK used to support the Columbian's in the fight against drug trafficking during the 1980s and 90s in particular. Really interesting insight into how informants were recruited, the ingenious ways that drugs were smuggled and the tell-tales as to which ship or container might be used for contraband. The UK agents effectively had to operate as spies, undertaking surveillance and counter surveillance measures and the like to combat the drug gangs.

Real life was probably more dangerous, if that is possible, than anything portrayed on Netflix. The author was not happy with the level of security provided in the dwellings the British Government selected for him, so he sorted out his own accommodation. That level of security attracted ministers, millionaires and all sorts. He was to later find that the father of the boy his son was great friends with 2 floors up, was number 5 in the Cali drug cartel. This chap was subsequently imprisoned in Columbia, then extradited to the USA where he turned state's evidence. As a result, 35 members of his extended family in Columbia, many children, were slaughtered in retribution.

Whilst the author had great success in realising the quantity of drugs seized and the numbers of gangsters imprisoned, it didn't really make a dent in the overall amount getting through....they would just supply more. Despite combatting drugs for a large part of his professional life, I was intrigued to find in the author's postscript that he did not believe the war on drugs could ever be won. He is now of the belief that it would be better to remove the criminality by legalising drugs, increasing revenues by taxing said drugs and dealing with the consequences using the money raised and by education.

[John A. Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Mark Farley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. But it left an awkward and unsettling taste in my mouth.

Because, despite how amazing this book is, the actions and career of Tom Chandler has not only prevented billions of drugs coming into the UK, he is also responsible for A LOT of innocent people dying in the process.

The official line is that they are collateral damage. That's before we get to the deaths of the MANY people that helped him be successful.

Tom Chandler shouldn't be alive statistically, and yet he is. But he should't talk about those who were tortured and killed under his watch, like they don't matter. Because when the very ruthless cartels, couldn't get to the people that snitched to Chandler, they murdered all of their family.

The author is like, shrug.

This is a great book, but the author is completely heartless and doesn't care about the dead bodies he has left behind him, lest a few pathetic platitudes.

Mind you, I certainly couldn't do that job. Mainly because it would put my (non-existent) family in immediate danger and they would all be shot in the face.

Something that clearly never bothered Tom Chandler. If that's your real name.

[Ptissem · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I was going to love this book, but despite the content and topic being interesting, it lacked any kind of storytelling. It very much read like an account/report, and so it took me weeks to finish. I just didn’t find it gripping. It was quite repetitive in the accounts of drug shipments etc. Had it involved more about life in Colombia in general, I feel it would have had more of a storytelling element to it, rather than just repetitive accounts of drug trafficking. The epilogue was a lot more interesting but I was genuinely quite bored of the whole book by the time I got to that part. Overall an interesting book, but not a page-turner in my opinion.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

The pages flew past . Loved this book . Really interesting and informative. If you watched Narcos on Netflix this will tie off a few loose ends of post Escobar & Cali cartel .
The author & his team had balls of steel & clearly earned the respect of everyone in the war zone they worked . Which says everything you need to know about their quality’s as handlers of human intelligence.
Highly recommend this book.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to know about drug smuggling from Colombia, this is the book for you. An in depth look at the state of drug trafficking and the way British Intelligence tried to stop it. Some great tales and riveting first hand experiences of the frontline of intelligence and investigation in South America.

[Emma Fearon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating

This was a really good read. Fascinating, with enough tension for me not to be able to put it down.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the story I was looking for but very information about Britain's efforts to stop drug trafficking in the 90's.

[Andreea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping! Sheds light on the UK's methods in countering drugs trafficking in the 90s. Interesting insights into inter-agency rivalry & related efficiency losses as of the 2000s. Liked most of all the conclusion: asking whether we've won the war against drugs is an oversimplified question, and probably the wrong one.

[Aparna · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly detailed account of the workings of Colombian drug cartels, and how they’ve managed to succeed in smuggling drugs, particularly cocaine, to Europe.

[Chris H · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read.

[mrs s blanchflower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

A gripping book that puts you in the thick of the action. A lot of hard work to bring down the drug lords.