25. Exclusive Interview: Carlos Lehder, Founder of Medellin Cartel

The Medellin Cartel rose in the 1980s by flooding the United States with cocaine, providing dope to dance floors in Miami all the way to crack houses in Los Angeles. Forbes magazine once estimated the tidal wave of powder made the cartel’s top trafficker Pablo Escobar $9 billion and its No. 2, Carlos Lehder, another $2.7 billion. While these numbers are likely major over-estimates of how much individual narcos actually keep, the cocaine trade certainly served up billions of dollars to Colombia, fueling an armed conflict involving the cartels, army, leftist guerillas and right wing paramilitaries that tore the South American nation apart and left a lot of families weeping. 

Escobar gained an infamy alongside Al Capone and later El Chapo as the most well-known mobsters of all time. But Lehder was also a fascinating character. He personally piloted planes and had his own private island in The Bahamas, which he used as a trampoline to bounce blow state side. The son of a German, he was portrayed by Netflix Narcos with a swastika tattoo as a Neo-Nazi narco. And he went on to become the star witness against the Panamanian dictator General Noriega, who was a CIA agent and an ally of Medellin Cartel before the U.S. invasion of Panama took him down in 1989. 

So when I recently got a message that I would have a chance to interview Lehder, who is now free and back in Colombia after a 33-year stint in prison, I scrambled to get there as quick as I could. The man I discovered was more humble and less boastful than you might expect, but then decades in a cell including four years in solitary, changes you. He has written a memoir of “Life and Death of the Medellin Cartel,” which you can find here and provides a revealing first-hand account to understand the period. 

We spoke for hours in what I believe is Carlos’ first English language interview. He goes into fascinating details about how the Medellin Cartel really functioned, its relationship with guerillas and paramilitaries, and how they owned governments and supplied the U.S.-backed Contra rebels. He also gets personal about what years in solitary does to your brain. I’m proud to say this episode show cases an important testimony that helps understand the history of the eighties in the Americas, while its also intriguing to see the man behind the myth. Get your tea or beer, zap it on and soak it up.

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