were given special shoes made with hollow bottoms in which the drugs were carried. The grandfather of someone in our organization had a shoe manufacturing corporation; when he got sick his son took over and began working with us. In this factory they would make these shoes with the merchandise sewn inside. There was almost no way they could ever be discovered. We even put people in wheelchairs to carry the drugs, which was safe because no one ever suspected that they were sitting on close to a million dollars in cocaine. Sometimes our mules were dressed in costume, like a nun, for example, or even a blind person—who would be using a hollow walking stick filled with merchandise. Rarely were there any problems or discoveries with these people.
When Pablo started doing it this way he would send a few passengers every other day. Then it was an everyday thing and then twice a day. Only once did the DEA discover the cocaine in two suitcases, but nobody picked up those suitcases so they didn’t catch anybody.
Another method, which eventually became well known, was having the mules eat the cocaine. The cocaine would be put in condoms and the mules would swallow them. The drugs were undetectable inside their bodies. When they arrived at their destination they would go to the bathroom and then, boom. While there were always enough mules willing to make this trip, this was the most dangerous method for them. If any of the condoms would start leaking, or if one opened up, the mule could die. People did die this way. It was written about in the newspapers in America and got a lot of attention.
But eventually Pablo decided it was not even necessary to send people with the suitcases; we could just send the suitcases. This was many years before the attack on 9/11 so security was easy, we paid the right people to put our suitcases on the flight. At the destination our people would just pick them up. One thing that Pablo found right away was that it was simple to convince people working in the right jobs to cooperate with us. Almost from the very first day Pablo knew he had to pay big bribes, just like in the contraband business. Pablo was generous with these payments, he wanted to make it so rewarding for people that they would never betray him. So many people earned their fortunes working for us that no one ever learned about. For example, when Pablo was flying our own airplanes the manager of a small airport we used in Colombia was paid up to $500,000 for each flight he arranged to land without any difficulty. This was a man who earned a small salary from his job, but when he was finally arrested the authorities found he had $27 million in all his bank accounts. So obviously it was never a problem recruiting the people we needed. People in positions to assist would come to us and make offers. These people would include airplane maintenance people who would put our merchandise aboard the plane for us, military and police officers and guards who would look in a different direction when they were told to, even an American who sold Pablo the flight schedules for the surveillance planes that flew above Florida searching the skies for our planes.
Tito Domínguez, who ran a smuggling operation for the cartel in Florida, remembers how simple it was to recruit the people we needed and deliver the cocaine. When he was making preparations to land planes in the Bahamas to refuel he wanted to guarantee the safety of this part of the operation. He found out from a Customs agent that he had been working with in the marijuana business that the government official who ran the airport would go to a certain bar every Friday afternoon. Tito often traveled with his pet mountain lion, by the name of T.C., which could be an intimidation, but this time he went there by himself and sat two seats away from this official at the bar. He didn’t need the threat, he had a better weapon: cash. He didn’t speak to him for a time, then finally said, “Excuse me, but I’d like to talk to you for a second.”
The official said, “About what, man?”
“We have a mutual friend who said I could speak to you about something sensitive.”