To talk about something that you know. I'm very open with you guys about stuff where I'm conflicted. Right there are issues that I cannot say I have a firm, you know, opinion, because I feel like maybe I'm missing something. And when I saw it, I'm sure many of you saw the same thing.
I saw videos of.
A Venezuelan drug boat, a go fast boat, and don't get me wrong, no doubt in my mind that that boat was full of drugs and drug dealers. But the United States military just blew it out.
Of the sky.
And I was like, well, that's new, and it seems a little extra judicial, because the war on drugs has always been a law enforcement effort until now. Then I saw a post on X by a gentleman named Reeve McSwain, and I asked him to come on the show to talk about it because he has a lot more experience in this field than I do as a former prosecutor.
First of all, Reeve, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I got to say first before we even get into the serious part of our converse station, Reid McSwain may be one of the coolest names that we've had on the show in a really long time, Like you could be a soap opera star, or you could be the alter ego of a superhero with that name. So hats off to your parents for giving you that one. If you could give my audience a little bit of your background and why you have a better perspective on the war on drugs.
Sure, I don't know if this will make me sound cooler or not that the name is Reed Swainston not mc swayin.
Oh sorry, well no, still cool, still very cool.
I should have just read my own writing.
Yeah. Well, background is I was a federal prosecutor for a couple of decades in just south of you, mostly in New Mexico. I spent some time in DC. I was one of the attorneys during the Obama period when he tried to civilianize the GETMO cases. If you don't right, yep, and so they pulled attorneys from the field for those cases. I was one of them. Gave me a little extra understanding of this issue that we're going to talk about.
But mostly the vast majority of my cases were what courts call complex litigation cases, all concerning cartels, mostly Mexican cartel cases, and how they affected our region in New Mexico four Corners region, and a number of my cases stretched well beyond our region as well as far east as well. You name it almost every state. Since we have the I twenty five and I forty corridors, you can imagine organizations that function here function elsewhere.
Well, we've delt with We've seen here in Denver trendy. Aragua loves Denver right because it's a crossroads and it makes it easy to.
Get stuff to other places.
But when I mentioned, as I was bringing you on Reeve that the war on drugs, Yes, we've called it the war on drugs for decades now, but has it really been a war or has it been a law enforcement effort that needed to be a war?
Let me ask that question.
I'm so glad you put it that way, because the characterization of a war on drugs has never been accurate until today. It is now a war on cartels, which are obviously the primary and these organizations are criminal organizations far more similar to what we know as foreign terrorist organizations than anything else, and they're in our hemisphere. I think we need to reframe how we think about cartels.
For too long, we've treated them as a criminal justice issue like you pointed out, when in reality they operate as a foreign terrorist organizations in every sense that matters. I mean they direct violence, same kind of corruption, mass casualty events against our homeland. And the depth poll far exceeds anything that ISIS or Alcada has ever done to us.
When you look at fence andyl death alone, and I know we have to do it collectively, not in one mass event like we're so you know, used to terrorism when we think about it, and that's just sent it all alone. I mean it doesn't even come close to including the heroin deaths which I saw down here in numbers that are just unspeakable, that ben fettering deaths and
so on. And that's why, when you know I have fought this battle for decades, towards the end of my career, I came to the unfortunate but very realistic realization that we're doing it wrong. They they do everything that part that terrorist organizations do. They're motive is just different.
And let me ask you specifically, because I spend way too much time I probably should admit this watching shows on drug cartels and organized crime south of the border and things of that nature. Can you give me some kind of idea of what kind of firepower man power that some of these the really highly organized cartels that are operating in Central and South America, what are we looking at in terms of what their capabilities are.
Well, TDA is a very well organized criminal organization and now terrorist organization centrally functions as a as an army or venezuela, the dark army, if you will, and then you've got the Mexican cartels. I was heavily into this during the two thousand and six seven eight war between the Wires cartels and the Wire's Cartel and the Cineloa cartel, when those battles were waging aggressively in Warez, when sine
Loo Is trying to take over. I targeted quite a number of the hit team commanders that were engaged in that war. And that war was heavy guns, all sorts of munitions that you can imagine. They all military like types of activities, targeted assassinations, large battalion level, from company to battalion level armies focused aggressively on taking out the opposition. So they fight each other just like they target us,
not in the same way. But these are just very, very dangerous criminal organizations that behave exactly like terrorist organizations.
I just watched a show on the drug war that you were just talking about between the two cartels, and they had a couple of guys there were part of that part of the organizations, and they said it got to the point where we were not only trying to take out other guys in the other cartel, but we were trying to out savage them, right Like. It wasn't just enough to kill a guy, it was, Oh, we're going to kill this guy. We're going to cut his head off, and we're going to shove his testicles in
his mouth. I mean, And they were describing this level of depravity that we would associate with a terrorist organization. Absolutely, and I think that people in the United States when you hear cartel, we sort of had this antiquated notion like, oh, they're like the mafia was back in the twenties, but they're well beyond in sheer violence what we had back then.
Wouldn't you say the.
Level of depravity is identical to the violence that you see executed by a moss and ISIS and al Qaeda. I mean, specifically going back to that, one of my targets he's in custom. You know. His nickname was El Jaguar because he liked to feed people to wild animals, specifically large cats.
I mean, as one does.
Jose Antonio Marufo, Jose Antonio Torres Marufo, you could look him up. He was one of our main targets. He was the hit teen commander for the Cinelo a cartel and they had, you know, companies that just using my analogy and the Marines. I was a heavy machine gunner, so I drove around on a turtleshell hum v with a fifty caliber on top. They do the same thing, just with different vehicles. You know, they mount these fifty caliber machine guns to trucks and SUV's and things like that.
And yeah, I mean I had I had so many stories of that kind of violence that could talk forever. I know it's a radio show and you can't talk forever.
But one of my witnesses, one of the cases that really affected me the most was I had a witness who flipped and he thought that it would be okay to return to Mexico to you know, for a day, to meet his family, thinking he was safe enough to do so, and he was murdered within less than an hour in the Walmart parking lot down in war as you're shot hundreds of times, spending a very clear message that you don't cooperate with the Feds, whether it's in Mexico or in the United States.
So this is what do we need to change? And here's my issue. And I told you this in an email that I sent you, Reeve, like I have concerns when our government makes these sort of utilateral decisions that don't seem to have a lot of sort of what's the sort I'm looking for? They don't go through the processes that are necessary. I'm one of those people that thinks we should have a declaration of war right before we actually go to war with people, something that has
now become an antiquated notion. But in your view, what needs to change the policies so people like me begin to understand better what we're actually doing here.
Well, you the way that that singular event, there are many many more tools in the in the toolbox for these cartels now that they're designated as terrorists. If you'd like me to do so, I can.
Fire off a few, please go right ahead.
You know, for example, we have a far greater access to their money laundering activities through the Patriot Act authorities. And I know that's controversial, but when used properly, it's very effective. We can literally shut down foreign banks. If they have any interest in working with us, they better turn over all assets and information that they have on our targets, even from foreign sources and banking institutions. You can.
We can do a tremendous amount under seven oh two with targeting foreign communications is a really big, big, big issue that's critical for law enforcement and now the combination of law enforcement in the military, and even more important. Seven o two still requires a FISK warrant. You know what that is, right, You've got to get the Foreign into Surveillance Court to authorize it. It's different than a wire tap, which I did. I did. All I did was wiretaps. I had a couple of FISK cases, but
they were terrorism cases, not cartel cases. Now I'd be able to use the FISK for cartel cases, which is huge. Instead of having to report to the court every thirty days, you get to do it every ninety days. It's just you know, it's a manpower relief, if you will. And in addition to that, now that These are terrorist organizations for truly foreign to foreign signals intelligence, meaning people talking to each other or communicating to each other, regardless of
how it is. We don't need a court order at all.
Oh wow, it's because of the designation. That's because of the designation of it being a terrorist organization. So how does this you're right, how does this in the grand scheme of things? What does this mean for our ability to go aggressively after terrorist organizations in foreign countries like in Mexico or in Venezuela or in you know, the various different places where they have their home base.
The only thing you need to understand to understand how significant this change is is to look what we did to Isis and Alcaeda around the world. We could do precisely that in Mexico, Venezuela and elsewhere. Now any place that they operate, we can do exactly that. We could do what we did to bend Latin in Pakistan. These
are terrorist organizations now. But the tools that you never really hear about that are critically important are what are I'm focusing on or what I would focus on if I were running these cases, if I were to be back at DOJ and running these cases. And that's a lot of the money side, and especially with cartels. You know, like I said, they're motivated through different lens. They don't really care as much about ideology, although there is some
of that. They want to get. They want to be billionaires. The leaders want to be billionaires, and they want to run. They want power, and they want money. Right Well, now, you know, through a variety of tools that are available to both the military side, but I'd say primarily the DOJ side, we can reach right into their assets and
take it off. And I think that that's part a big part of this why this designation happens, because when you start taking billions of dollars away from these organizations and you use that money to increase law enforcement tools, because that money doesn't just sit there. In other words, they have no right. Nobody has a right to what's called well ill gotten gain is what you're sure audience
would understand. So if we reach in and we take billions of dollars from them, they had no complaint to come at us through any legal mechanism because they had no right to that drug proceeds or any other proceeds from unlawful activity. They just don't have any leverage at all. We have all the leverage now. I like that it is being able to reach deep into foreign countries and take it. I like that I foreign countries for help.
That part I really like, By the way, I mean, I am and again, I am certainly not pro cartel, but I am very much a rule of law person. So I'm glad you're coming on to help clarify this. What is the reality about how the Mexican cartels specifically because it sounds like that was kind of your area of expertise while you were us here. How pervasive is the issue of corruption within the legal structure of Mexico.
In your view, it's so unimaginably corrupt, but in an understandable way, right because you know, it's either silver or bullet kind of scenario for every judge, every my equivalent down there, federal prosecutors, they often have to make that decision do I take the cash that's being offered to me, or do I take a bullet to my head and I'm no longer able to provide for my family. That's the level of corruption in Mexico, and it is extremely pervasive.
It's everywhere. I mean I sent you an article on one of the cases I prosecute. They try their best to infiltrate our law enforcement here, and occasionally they do have some sexcess as I've prosecuted. You know, law enforcement in this country who we're working for the cartels and and you know that's why they're successful. They're just really really good at their business. And when you don't have
to follow SEC regulations, you don't care about it. You can do whatever you want because you're you're willing to put somebody sixteen under to take that next step.
Right, somebody on my text line just asks who gets to keep the cartel money?
We do, meaning the United States, and then it's divvied out. However it's divvied out oftentimes through asset forfeiture. You'll see the proceeds go back into law enforcement. But we've never seen this level of wealth before. It's the potential for us to seize assets now is so massive. I mean, I could decision to maybe pay down, you know, a little bit of our debt or something. But bottom line is, we do and people in Washington decide where it goes.
So we're almost out of time. I got time for one more question. Right now. And that is this.
So are they do they have their assets in banks? Because I mean, I'm from Florida. I grew up in Florida during the cocaine cowboy days and you would hear these stories about them having houses in a suburb that were just literally full of money because they couldn't get into a bank. So are the cartels in banks? How is where are their assets that we can seize?
Yeah, they absolutely are in banks. They're in foreign banks and so but they're not just in banks. I mean, you can't put a billion dollars underneath your mattress, you know, right they have they have gotten really skilled at cleaning their money, or at least attempting to clean their money. They might give one hundred million dollars to the you know, the daughter to purchase real estate in whatever, Manhattan or Barcelona, it doesn't matter. Through these tools, now we follow those
assets and we take it. And we may take real property, or we may take the assets that remain in cash in bank accounts and even you know, real property in foreign countries that have value. You know, we can go after those things. There's almost no limit now to what we can go after. And that's that's where I saw the greatest potential for this designation is on the money side, because this is where they're really really going to be hurt.
Amen to that.
From your lips to God's ears, Reeve Swainston, I really appreciate you making time for me today, giving me that perspective because, as I said, you know, it's like I see stuff like that, and though I'm not opposed to blowing up drug dealers just on principle, I am always nervous when governments decide to kill people without sort of laying out the process on how they got there. So this conversation has been really illuminating on how they got there.
I appreciate your time today, Reeve, and I Reeve Swainston is still an amazing name. Like you're practically a soapapa star without even leaving your house.
That's funny. Thanks so much.
Happy to be here, hey man, Have a great day.