The Medellín Cartel was a powerful and highly organized Colombian drug cartel and terrorist organization originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia, that was founded and led by Pablo Escobar. It is often considered to be the first major "drug cartel" and was referred to as such due to the organization's upper echelons and overall power-structure being built on a partnership between multiple Colombian traffickers operating alongside Escobar. Other members included Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez, Fabio Ochoa Vásquez, Juan David Ochoa Vásquez, José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, and Carlos Lehder. Escobar's main partner in the organization was his cousin Gustavo Gaviria, who handled much of the cartel's shipping arrangements and the more general and detailed logistical aspects of the cocaine trafficking routes and international smuggling networks, which were supplying at least 80% of the world's cocaine during its peak.
Félix Ismael Rodríguez Mendigutia is a Cuban American former Central Intelligence Agency Paramilitary Operations Officer in the Special Activities Division, known for his involvement in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the execution of communist revolutionary Che Guevara as well as his close ties to George H. W. Bush during the Iran–Contra affair.
Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel. When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. He was murdered on February 19, 1986, by contract killers hired by the cartel.
A Man Apart is a 2003 American vigilante action thriller film directed by F. Gary Gray and co-produced by and starring Vin Diesel as Sean Vetter, an undercover DEA agent who is on a vendetta to take down a mysterious drug lord named Diablo after his wife is murdered. The film also stars Larenz Tate with Timothy Olyphant, Geno Silva, and Steve Eastin. Released by New Line Cinema in the United States on April 4, 2003, it received generally negative reviews from critics and performed poorly at the box office.
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury, with the enumerated powers of pursuing crimes related to the possession, distribution, and trafficking of listed narcotics including cannabis, opium, cocaine, and their derivatives. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the FBN carried out operations and missions around the world. The bureau was in existence from its establishment in 1930 until its dissolution in 1968. FBN is considered a predecessor to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Drop Zone is a 1994 American action thriller film directed by John Badham, starring Wesley Snipes, Gary Busey, Yancy Butler, Michael Jeter, Sam Hennings, Luca Bercovici and Kyle Secor. When a U.S. Marshal has to break up a drug smuggling gang, he has to take to the skies. Drop Zone was released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on December 9, 1994.
Double Team is a 1997 action comedy film directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark in his American directorial debut, and written by Don Jakoby and Paul Mones. It stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as counter-terrorist agent Jack Quinn, who is assigned to bring an elusive terrorist known as Stavros to justice. Things become personal when Stavros kidnaps Quinn's pregnant wife after his own lover and child were killed in an assassination attempt gone awry. Aiding Quinn in his rescue is his flamboyant weapons dealer Yaz.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in the trafficking of illicit drugs. Books and journalistic investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor and diplomat Peter Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Inspector General. The various investigations have generally not led to clear conclusions that the CIA itself has directly conducted drug trafficking operations, although there may have been instances of indirect complicity in the activities of others.
A number of writers have alleged that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the Nicaraguan Contras' cocaine trafficking operations during the 1980s Nicaraguan civil war. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General which ultimately concluded the allegations were unsupported. The subject remains controversial.
The Guadalajara Cartel, also known as The Federation, was a Mexican drug cartel which was formed in the late 1970s by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo in order to ship cocaine and marijuana to the United States. Among the first of the Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with the Colombian cocaine mafias, the Guadalajara Cartel prospered from the cocaine trade. Throughout the 1980s, the cartel controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border. It had operations in various regions in Mexico which included the states of Jalisco, Baja California, Colima, Sonora, Chihuahua and Sinaloa among others. Multiple modern present day drug cartels such as the Tijuana, Juárez and Sinaloa cartels originally started out as branches or "plazas" of the Guadalajara Cartel before its eventual disintegration.
The Dark Wind is a crime novel by American writer Tony Hillerman, the fifth in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series, published in 1982. It is the second of the novels to feature Officer Jim Chee.
Killing Floor is the debut novel by Lee Child, first published in 1997 by Putnam. The book won the Anthony Award and Barry Award for best first novel. Set in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia it follows Jack Reacher in his first thriller book. It is written in the first person.
CIA activities in Nicaragua were frequent in the late 20th century. The increasing influence gained by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, a left-wing and anti-imperialist political party in Nicaragua, led to a sharp decrease in Nicaragua–United States relations, particularly after the Nicaraguan Revolution. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to support the Contras, a right-wing Nicaraguan political group to combat the influence held by the Sandinistas in the Nicaraguan government. Various anti-government rebels in Nicaragua were organized into the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the first Contra group, at the behest of the CIA. The CIA also supplied the Contras with training and equipment, including materials related to torture and assassination. There have also been allegations that the CIA engaged in drug trafficking in Nicaragua.
Gunwalking, or "letting guns walk", was a tactic used by the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office and the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which ran a series of sting operations between 2006 and 2011 in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them" - however as of October 2011, none of the targeted high-level cartel figures had been arrested. These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States. The Jacob Chambers Case began in October 2009 and eventually became known in February 2010 as Operation Fast and Furious after agents discovered Chambers and the other suspects under investigation belonged to a car club.
Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar was a Mexican-American intelligence officer for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In February 1985, Camarena was kidnapped by corrupt police officers hired by the Guadalajara Cartel. He was interrogated under torture and murdered. Three leaders of the cartel were eventually convicted in Mexico for Camarena's murder. The U.S. investigation into Camarena's murder led to ten more trials in Los Angeles for other Mexican nationals involved in the crime. The case continues to trouble U.S.–Mexican relations, most recently when Rafael Caro Quintero, one of the three convicted traffickers, was released from a Mexican prison in 2013. Caro Quintero again was captured by Mexican forces in July 2022.
Graceland is an American drama television series created by Jeff Eastin that premiered on the USA Network on June 6, 2013. On October 1, 2015, USA Network cancelled Graceland after three seasons.
Personal is the nineteenth book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. The novel was published on 28 August 2014 in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland, and on 2 September 2014 in the United States and Canada. The plot of the book revolves around Reacher's pursuit of a sniper who has attempted to assassinate the President of France. This book is written in the first person.
Night School is a 2016 novel by Lee Child. This is the twenty-first book in the Jack Reacher series. It is written in the third person.
The Midnight Line is the twenty-first book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. The book was released on 7 November 2017 in the United States by Delacorte Press and on 15 November 2017 in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland by Bantam Press. It is written in the third person.
The Sentinel is the twenty-fifth book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It is the first Jack Reacher book to be co-authored by James Grant and his younger brother Andrew Grant but published using their pen names of Lee Child and Andrew Child respectively. The book was released on 27 October 2020 in the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland by Delacorte Press and Bantam Press.
