Chris Feistl: DEA Agent, Cali Cartel, and the Hunt After Escobar | Be Yourself Podcast

Chris Feistl

Former DEA agent and author of After Escobar — on taking down the Cali Cartel, surviving a year of daily failures in the world's most dangerous country, and why thinking outside the box is the only way forward

Watch on YouTube Chris's Book
34 minutes
DEA · Cali Cartel · Colombia · Resilience · Leadership

About the Guest

Chris Feistl — Former DEA Special Agent, Author of After Escobar

A DEA special agent for 26+ years who started in 1988 and spent six years working undercover in Miami against the Medellin and Cali cartels at the epicenter of the cocaine trade

In late 1993 he and partner Dave Mitchell were sent to Colombia to take down the four godfathers of the Cali Cartel — nearly two and a half years on the ground that became the basis for Season 3 of Netflix's Narcos

Who He Is
former DEA special agent with 26+ years, award-winning co-author of After Escobar, and a real-life figure portrayed in Season 3 of Netflix's Narcos
The Mission
sent to Colombia in 1993 to arrest the four Cali Cartel godfathers, who controlled 80–85% of cocaine reaching the US, amid corruption at every level of government
The Book
After Escobar, co-written with Dave Mitchell — an account of their years in Colombia, the daily failures, and how they brought down the most powerful cartel in history
The Principle
don't be afraid to fail, but learn from every failure — have a plan A, B, C and D, think outside the box; if you're not failing, you're not even trying

Key Quotes

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The level of corruption right that the Cali cartel had in the Colombian government was staggering.

Chris Feistl
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We're not leaving this country until every one of those four are in handcuffs or dead.

Chris Feistl
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Don't be afraid to go outside the box. Go outside your comfort zone. Try things — take calculated risks. Weigh your options.

Chris Feistl

Episode Chapters

0:00 Intro 1:20 How Chris Started in Law Enforcement 4:00 Was Chris Hooked Right Away? 5:10 Applications to Federal Agencies 6:00 FBI Academy 7:00 Drug Market in the Late 80s 9:01 Drug Trafficking Routes 13:30 Biggest Cocaine Seizures 14:39 What Made Chris and Dave Good Partners? 16:18 How to Get Sent to Colombia? 18:44 The Dominance of the Cali Cartel 21:15 The Plan and The Execution 23:00 Operating as Americans in Cali 24:51 Operation Finale 25:40 Constant Failures 27:00 What Kept Them Going? 28:00 Thinking Outside the Box 30:42 Career Advice from Chris

Full Transcript

BTW: This episode of the Be Yourself Podcast is produced by Beverly Media. Want a podcast that looks and sounds this good? Check out Beverly Production →
0:00 Intro
Chris When Dave and I first got selected to go to Colombia, Pablo Escobar was still alive. And what was the plan? We have to work in conjunction with the Colombian security forces.
Serhiy So, is it safe to say that that period was one of the most dangerous periods and the locations to be in in the world?
Chris The level of corruption right that the Cali cartel had in the Colombian government was staggering.
Serhiy Tell us about the happy ending. Were you able to bust these guys?
Chris It took us almost one year on the ground of doing operations every day, doing raids, doing arrest operations before we finally had any success.
Serhiy Hey everybody, welcome to the Be Yourself podcast, the podcast on expressing our true selves. Today my guest is Chris Feistl who is award-winning author of After Escobar. He is a TV personality portrayed in season 3 of Narcos on Netflix. And Chris is a former DEA agent with over 26 years of experience. Is it? Yes.
Chris Yes.
Serhiy You have such a tremendous tremendous life story and I don't even know where to start.
1:20 How Chris Started in Law Enforcement
Serhiy Maybe let's start where you want to start. How did the involvement with the DEA happen for you?
Chris So, I got involved with the DEA and in law enforcement kind of by accident because when I was in college, I was majoring in law and political science. And I wanted to go to law school and be an attorney. And during the junior year of college, I got a job at the beach. So during the summer a lot of times we would go down to the beach and to the ocean and you know hang out, do a little surfing and stuff. But while we're there you need a job to support yourself and you know go out and have some fun. So I got a job during the summer as a what they call a seasonal police officer. And I wasn't quite sure what a seasonal police officer was, right? But as I found out, we went through a 40-hour, one-week training academy and we were given a weapon, a gun, and we were out, you know, enforcing the laws and state statutes of the state of New Jersey.
Chris So, as I got involved with police work, I had a chance to work an undercover assignment while I was at the beach trying to buy methamphetamine from a girl I had met in a bar. And that kind of opened my eyes into this law enforcement realm which I really didn't have any desire to be a part of. And then you know one thing led to another. I started researching different careers in law enforcement with the DEA, the FBI, CIA. And that kind of led me to a full-time police officer position down in Virginia Beach, Virginia. And then I parlayed that into working with the DEA.
Serhiy And it all started with just a 40 hours training after which you were given a gun and the right to hunt the bad guys pretty much.
Chris And I'll show you how times have changed because you know I can't imagine any police department or anywhere even as a part-time or summer position really doing that now because of liability and everything like that. So it was really a unique opportunity that a lot of these shore communities — because you know in the summertime everybody goes to the beach. So the population at these beach towns really expands and swells a lot. So they were always looking for these little part-time or seasonal police officers to come in and augment the real police officials and help them out during those summer months.
4:00 Was Chris Hooked Right Away?
Serhiy And it seems that you were hooked. Was it sexy? Was it really cool in a way? Did you feel yourself like this guy from movies at that point?
Chris You know, not really. It was kind of cool though, you know, to be a 20-year-old kid or 21 years old working on the boardwalk trying to buy drugs from another person. But you know when I got into that realm so to say and I started looking into you know the amount of drugs and everything that was coming into the US and you know the problems that that was really causing — it you know and it sounds kind of cliché and everything but that was the chance for me to kind of do my part to do my duty to kind of do the right thing to help out right. So, you know, while it was pretty neat at first, it was one of those things like, you know, hey, this would be a good opportunity for me to kind of get involved and to, you know, to do my part to help get rid of this issue or problem.
5:10 Applications to Federal Agencies
Serhiy So, now you are with DEA. What year is it?
Chris So, just to go a little bit further. So from New Jersey, I work at Virginia Beach Police Department as a real police officer this time, not a seasonal or part time one, for a year and a half. So for I do that for a year and a half, but while I'm even trying to get hired by Virginia Beach, I apply to DEA and a couple different federal agencies. So I'm working in Virginia Beach Police Department just like hoping and waiting that DEA will call me. So I finally get the call from DEA in early 1988 that I would be hired and be attending the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. So early 1988 is when I started.
Serhiy Wow. FBI Academy. And how is FBI Academy different from the police academy?
6:00 FBI Academy
Chris So back then the DEA we didn't have our own academy per se. So what we did is we shared space with the FBI at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. It was on a marine base and the DEA Academy was it was much more intense than police academy. Much more physical fitness, much greater focus on you know drug laws and academics and stuff. Firearms training pretty much every day — it was just, you know, instilled into you and the training over and over and over pretty much every day — defensive tactics. So, it was really, you know, it was almost like a paramilitary academy back then in the 80s and they really, you know, pushed you to the limit to try to weed out, you know, some of the people that they hired. So, it was it was pretty intense. It wasn't super difficult, but it was intense every day.
7:00 Drug Market in the Late 80s
Serhiy Chris, can you give me and my viewers a better understanding of the narco market, the problem in the 80s with the drugs being transported to the US and in general maybe in South America?
Chris So my first duty station after I got out of Quantico, Virginia was Miami, Florida. So Miami in the mid to late 80s was just, you know, it was the place to be if you wanted to be in drug law enforcement, especially with DEA, right? You had Miami Vice was going on. You had the cocaine cowboys — they had these shootouts all over Dade County. And you know, Miami because of its geographic location was only, you know, 1,500 miles from Colombia, from South America, and it was one of the primary entry points for Colombian cocaine into the US at that time. And, you know, Miami had naturally just had a large population of Colombians. So, it was the entry point and it was the place to bring in cocaine.
Chris So, basically, you know, we'd always joke around and we go like, "Hey man, we're in Miami in the late '80s. Cocaine, it's literally falling out of the sky." And a lot of times it was because they had all of the air activity, all the smuggling activity that was coming in from the Bahamas. So, between that Caribbean corridor, that cocaine was just coming into Miami in tons and tons from the Cali cartel as well as the Medellín cartel. So, for a young DEA agent just out of the academy in the late 1980s, Miami was the place to be if you wanted to work drug law enforcement.
9:01 Drug Trafficking Routes
Serhiy They would throw bags with cocaine from the planes or what?
Chris Well, I mean, any way that you could imagine smugglers bringing cocaine into the US, they did. And I'll give you a couple of the primary ways that they did. So, in 1978, the Medellín cartel and specifically Carlos Lehder, they had formulated a plan and basically revolutionized cocaine smuggling at the time. Because back then, if you had an aircraft loaded with cocaine, it couldn't make the round trip from Colombia to Miami or along the coast, drop the cocaine off, and come back to Colombia. It just didn't have enough fuel. So, Carlos Lehder, they purchased an island in the Bahamas called Norman's Cay, which is about 200 miles off the coast of Florida. And they used this whole island for over four years as just a refueling and a trans-shipment mecca. They went in there, they bought the whole island. They kicked everybody off, and they just landed plane after plane after plane onto this island, refueled it, loaded it up with cargo, and they bombarded the United States with cocaine, and then the planes would go back or refuel or just go right back to Colombia.
Chris So that was one of the ways that they just bombarded the US with cocaine. As well is they started to use containerized cargo, right? These huge freighters with hundreds or thousands of cargo containers. They would load them up with cocaine and bring them into different ports in the US, you know, and then you started to slowly see the shift into Mexico. So, there were a variety of ways that they were bringing cocaine into the US.
Serhiy I found in one of the press releases about your book and about your story, I saw this photo of you presumably standing in Miami. No, undercover DEA Chris standing to the left — cartel drug seizure, Naples, Florida, 1993. That was around the same time. Do you remember this exact — we will show this picture — what preceded this photo? What actually happened there?
Chris Sure. So, when I was in Miami, I you know, even before I had — I was all into the look. So, I didn't get a haircut for about 6 years. Almost 6 years. I had hair down to the middle of my back. I had three earrings, you know, and the chains and everything. So, you had to look the part — the idea here, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, to kind of do that and to blend in and to work some undercover assignments, but two, because you could, right? They let us do that. So, I was like, hey, you know what? They can let me grow my hair and do this.
Chris So, that particular photo that you're talking about is that we had done an undercover deal with remnants of the Medellín cartel where we were posing as transportation specialists, right? So we had access to boats and in this case that was actually a sailboat that we used to bring in about 660 kilos of cocaine from Colombia. So, we had brought that in in a sailboat and we offloaded it into Naples, Florida into an undercover house that we had, you know, like a smuggling house and then we were able to turn that back over to the Medellín cells and then arrest the traffickers. So, yeah, that was about 660 kilos of cocaine that we did on that.
13:30 Biggest Cocaine Seizures
Serhiy Oh my god, I remember Jack McFarland who actually introduced us — thank you very much, Jack, for this introduction — he told about the seizure of 100 kilos of cocaine in Philadelphia and this is 660 kilos and it's not even the biggest catch, right?
Chris No, that one was 660. But when we were in Colombia, we did a couple of different cases where there was a vessel called the Speza Maru back in 2001 where we seized 13.7 tons. 26,000 pounds. That's millions of dollars worth of cocaine out of the Eastern Pacific. Yeah. We had other cases where we seized, you know, 8 tons, 10 tons — massive maritime shipments that we had when we were working in Colombia that we had intel that we would pass on to the Coast Guard and other US assets out in the Eastern Pacific and we would take those off. But yeah, multiple multiple seizures, 10 plus tons.
Serhiy Were you staggering? You think about 26,000 pounds. This is — I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it. I just can't. I mean, you know, sometimes you see stories, you see movies, but life is the best movie. You can't make it up.
14:39 What Made Chris and Dave Good Partners?
Serhiy What exactly made you and your partner who wrote the book After Escobar together — Dave Mitchell — what made you guys such a dynamic duo, such a good tandem?
Chris So when I was in the academy, Dave Mitchell was in the class ahead of me. So we would see each other in the hallways periodically and we didn't have anything better to do which was pretty common at night — we'd go down to the boardroom which was a little bar and we'd have a couple beers and eat and we'd kind of shoot the breeze. And when we both got our first assignment we both got sent to Miami, Florida. So, we knew each other in the academy, albeit not very well, and we were both in Miami for about 6 years together. Although we didn't work together, we would see each other obviously — you're in that office environment, you'd run across, hey Dave, what's going on? Let's go out and get a beer. So, we had a pretty good relationship there.
Chris And we both started working cases, you know, and Dave did an operation which was called Snowcap where he went down into the jungles of South America and Bolivia and attacked the cocaine at its source, you know, blowing up laboratories and airstrips and stuff. So, you know, Dave had that desire to work internationally. And while I was in Miami as well, I started to work a lot of cases just like we talked about — smuggling cases affiliated to the Medellín and the Cali cartel. So, and I thought to myself, too, like, hey, if I wanted to be a real DEA agent, I had to work in Miami in the late 80s. But if I wanted to be a real real DEA agent, I got to go to where it all happens. I got to go to Colombia, right? I got to go to the mecca of drug trafficking.
16:18 How to Get Sent to Colombia?
Chris So, you know, I had talked to Dave and said, "Hey, you know, thinking about putting in for Colombia to go after, you know, the Cali and Medellín cartels. What do you think?" And he was like, "Yeah, man. I was thinking the same thing." So we kind of had the same shared goals and desires and that we wanted to work internationally and we wanted to do it in the hottest place so to say which was Colombia. So we always had that very good relationship, a very good dynamic, and we worked very well together.
Serhiy So did you volunteer to go to Colombia? How did it happen? DEA doesn't choose who they want to send — you can just come and say we want to go?
Chris Well, you can say you want to go, but you have to apply. You have to put in — they'll look at your resume. They'll look at your background. They'll give you an interview. They see how your skills apply, what you did in your domestic offices, and if that would translate to working in a foreign environment. So, Miami was always a pretty heavy recruiting ground for offices in Central and South America, especially Bogotá, because, you know, you worked a lot of those high-profile cases involving the cartels. You got a lot of travel internationally to different countries, so you knew what to expect. You know, you didn't want to have somebody come in from Iowa or some very small state in the US that had never traveled outside the US, right? You would prefer to have somebody who traveled extensively internationally that, you know, wasn't going to experience any kind of culture shock when you were there.
18:44 The Dominance of the Cali Cartel
Serhiy Now, we're getting to the most interesting part. So you are being sent to fight to try to take down the Cali godfathers as they're called. Can you give us an overview of what's happening in 1993 in Colombia and who are the main figures in the game?
Chris So when Dave and I first got selected to go to Colombia, Pablo Escobar was still alive. So we got selected in late 1993. So I thought to myself, I'm like, man, this is the greatest time to be selected to go to Colombia because not only can I work against what was left of the Medellín cartel because they had suffered devastating losses by the Colombian security forces, but I can work and go after Pablo Escobar as well as work against the Cali cartel, which is what we were mainly selected to do. But before I got there, Pablo Escobar was killed in December of 1993.
Chris So everybody in the US government and the Colombian government knew that, okay, with Pablo gone and the Medellín cartel collapsed — the big hunt now is going to be the Cali cartel because the Cali cartel had slowly risen even while Escobar was on the run to become the biggest drug cartel in history, right? They were just dominating the cocaine trade from Colombia. They at their height were responsible for 80 to 85% of cocaine that reached US soil and 90% worldwide. So they controlled the cocaine trade on six continents. And if Antarctica had a cocaine problem, it would have been seven continents.
Chris So, all the while they were just earning billions and billions and billions of dollars and they were using that money to fortify their infrastructure in Colombia. They were buying properties. They were corrupting all kinds of Colombian officials and government officials. So they had basically built this empire where they were very insulated because of all the corruption. So that's kind of what we were up against when we were sent down there now to go after what was the biggest cartel operating in Colombia and throughout the world at that time.
21:15 The Plan and The Execution
Serhiy And what was the plan? And maybe we can fast forward a little bit — did the plan work or you had to adapt on the fly?
Chris Well, the plan was to help the Colombian government and Colombian security forces go after the Cali cartel — to arrest the four godfathers who were the main leaders of the Cali cartel and to try to dismantle the entire organization and, you know, make it back home without getting killed or having any major problems. So that was the goal. But you know, when you have US agents who are operating in a foreign government, right, we don't have the same freedoms that we do like in the US — I can't just go out, Sergey, if I saw you on the street and said, "Hey, there's Sergey. I'm going to go arrest him and put handcuffs on him." We're not allowed to do that as American agents on foreign turf. So we have to work in conjunction with the Colombian security forces.
Chris So you could already see the problems that developed because as we said before, the level of corruption right that the Cali cartel had in the Colombian government was staggering — right, they had even bought the presidency in 1994. They had donated between six and 10 billion dollars to get President Ernesto Samper elected. So at every turn and at every level in these government institutions the Cali cartel had corrupted them. So our job was very very difficult because initially every time that we tried to do operations to arrest anybody within the Cali cartel — especially the kingpins — our operations were compromised due to the systemic corruption.
23:00 Operating as Americans in Cali
Serhiy So is it safe to say that that period was one of the most dangerous periods and the locations to be in in the world and in history at the time?
Chris Colombia during the late 80s early 90s was — and you can research this — it was the most dangerous country in the world. It led the world in homicides. About 28 to 30,000 people were getting killed in Colombia every year. Colombia also led the world in kidnappings. They were averaging well over 1,400 kidnappings a year. And that number was very low because a lot of the kidnappings that happened there, they weren't even reported, right? Because you were kidnapped by drug traffickers or these guerrilla groups like the FARC or the ELN. And a lot of them went unreported. So Colombia at the time was the most dangerous country in the world.
Chris And you had myself and my partner Dave Mitchell who were both well over six feet tall, blonde hair — you know, we stick out like sore thumbs. We couldn't blend in. And that was always the joke that people would say. It's like, "Hey man, you guys don't blend in. How the heck are you going to get anything done while in Colombia?" So that was the other obstacle that we had — trying to camouflage ourselves when working in Cali, Colombia — because at the time in Cali there was zero American presence. There were no Americans. So anywhere that we went we were immediately identified as Americans. If we were lucky maybe Europeans but mainly US and since we were Americans — DEA or CIA operatives. So it was very difficult for us to operate over there.
24:51 Operation Finale
Serhiy But tell us about the happy ending. Were you able to bust these guys?
Chris So it took us, believe it or not, almost one year on the ground of doing operations every day, you know, doing raids, doing arrest operations before we finally had any success. So, one year on the ground and it took us, you know, well over two years — almost two and a half years — until we were able to catch or have the other godfathers surrender. So, it wasn't easy. It was very difficult. It took an extended amount of time, but we were finally able to. And this is one of the lessons I think that I'd like to point out to your audience and to your listeners — we failed over and over and over again for almost a year on a daily basis — failed because we weren't able to accomplish our mission and to arrest who we were sent there to arrest.
25:40 Constant Failures
Chris But every mission that we did and every operation that we did, even though it failed, we still learned a little bit, right? And through every one of those failures, we were finally able to come up with the plan to circumvent that corruption and to be successful. So, you know, don't be discouraged from your failures. Learn from your failures, right? It's one thing if you fail and you keep failing, but learn from them, right? Learn why you failed and what you can do differently. And that's exactly what we did. And we got pretty good at failing because it was just over and over and over.
Chris And there's a great quote that I have in the chapters of my book. I have quotes under every chapter. And I think it's about chapter 13 or so where it says by Denzel Washington, if you're not failing, you're not even trying, right? Which basically means, you know, you're going to go out and you're going to fail, but learn from those mistakes and those failures and build upon that to be successful.
27:00 What Kept Them Going?
Serhiy You know, sometimes you get really devastated because you put in work and there is just no reward, right? So, what kept you going? Did you enjoy the process?
Chris Yeah, we enjoyed it. But it was like a personal challenge to me and Dave at that point because, you know, after a while, after so many times where you fail, you just get it into your head where you're saying — and we even made a vow and I write about it in the book — and said that, you know, we're not leaving this country until every one of those four are in handcuffs or dead. So, we pretty much made a vow to ourselves because we were so frustrated with the corruption. And that's what really drove us is that like, hey, I'm not going to keep failing over and over again. We're going to stay here and we're going to do it and we're going to get it done right because this is what the DEA sent us there to do. This was our job. This was our mission.
Chris And whatever happened, you know, luckily I'm still not there, but I said, you know, we were going to stay there until we got it right, until we figured out a way to apprehend the four leaders of the Cali cartel.
28:00 Thinking Outside the Box
Serhiy This is very very motivational and inspiring for all of us business people and even me trying to grow my YouTube channel because every single time you upload a new video and you see 20 views, 30 views, 40 views, right? It seems like other guys are succeeding and you're just lagging behind. But I think when we compare ourselves to ourselves from yesterday, this is the only thing that matters. If I become a little bit better than I was yesterday, that's what matters.
Chris That's exactly right. And you need to take that attitude every day and do the same thing and build on what you did the day before. And you know, maybe today you didn't do something exactly the way you wanted to do it, but you make a note of that and you say, "Hey, you know what? When I was talking to Chris yesterday, maybe I should have had, you know, this question or that or I should have done this." And then you utilize that the next day on your next interview. And then you learn from it and then you build on it. And then what happens? You start to see, hey, that worked out pretty well. Yeah, that was a good idea. Let me try that. Right? Let me try that. And that gets back to what we said. Don't be afraid to think outside the box.
Chris Right? In order to do the operations that we did to catch these guys, we had to go way outside the box, right? We had to bring specialized units from 200 miles away from another city and bring them into where we were at and disguise operations, what we were doing. We were constantly changing and even lying to some of the units we were working with to get them there to do what we needed them to do, but that's what we had to do to get the job done. So, when you start thinking outside the box and trying different things, you're going to find, you know, maybe you fail a few times at first, but you're going to be more successful in the long run.
Chris And, you know, I always tell people, do not be afraid to go outside the box. Go outside your comfort zone. Try things, you know — now don't try stupid things. Take calculated risks, right? Weigh your options. Look at everything and make a very good decision as best you can with the facts that you have. Sometimes you don't have all the facts and then go with it. But don't be afraid to fail.
30:42 Career Advice from Chris
Serhiy As we close, what is your advice to people who are considering the work in federal agencies? What does it take to become a great special agent today?
Chris Well, I think it's not just one thing. I think there's a lot of things that go into being successful in no matter what line of business or career that you're going into. And some of them that we talked about, right? You know, don't be afraid to take risks, but take calculated risks. Weigh your options. Have a plan. That's one of my big things. Have a plan. Have a backup plan. And then have another one or two backup plans, right? Have a plan A, B, C, and D. There's a lot of times in the book where I reference, you know, this didn't work and we had to go to plan B. And sometimes we even had to pivot to plan C. So, be prepared. Have a plan. Stick to your plan. Don't be afraid to make a mistake. Think outside the box.
Chris And here's another one too — and this applies really to any line of business — as problems arise, deal with them. Do not let small problems become big problems, right? And I saw this over and over again in my work in a lot of Central and South American countries where a lot of times they don't have the resources to tackle multiple problems at once, right? So they go, "Okay, well this is the biggest problem. Let's deal with that." And then they deal with that. But then by that time these other six problems are now huge problems. So you have to deal with problems as they arise because if not, small problems become big problems and then you have major disasters at the end.
Chris So, I think all of that — especially in law enforcement — you've got to think like a bad guy, right? If you're chasing a fugitive, you have to put yourself in the mind of that fugitive, right? And you would say, "Okay, if I were him, where would I go? Where would I hide? What was the most conducive place for me to go to?" And that's how you would have to be successful — is to try to get yourself into the mindset of some of these bad guys that you're dealing with.
Serhiy Great. I want to remind all of our viewers that Chris has got a book that we mentioned a few times. It's on the website afterescobar.com. So, thank you so much Chris for this inspirational talk and hopefully we'll do this again sometime.
Chris Absolutely. Thank you, Sergey. It was a pleasure to be with you and you be safe over there.