Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles - [Interviewer] Do you think your life would be a good movie? - That's really up to others. I've had a lot of fun. I'm Mike McGowan, I'm a former FBI Special Agent. We had an opportunity as law enforcement to make an investigation against the world's most powerful drug organization in which we targeted the Sinaloa Cartel and Chapo Guzman. So taking almost up to a year to prepare this we finally set the first meeting to take place in Florida in early 2010. If you were to write a script from that day this is how it would look. The Sinaloa Cartel was responsible for hundreds of murders in Mexico and billions of dollars of narcotics being transferred throughout the world. And I remember clearly to this day that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up because to have an opportunity in 2009 to take a run at Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel was unheard of. When we first began this investigation we had a cooperating witness who came to us and said, "I can give you the Sinaloa Cartel." He choose to cooperate with the FBI in order to have some of his property, which had been seized in his earlier cases returned to him and his family. Chapo Guzman wanted to set up a pipeline from Mexico into Europe to supply all of Europe. So we put a plan into effect in which he believed we would be drug traffickers out of Europe and specifically Italy. After the informant went into Mexico he was able to convince the Sinaloa Cartel that the United States would be okay to have meetings only. We wouldn't buy or sell drugs in the meetings, we would simply be businessmen getting together to have discussions in a neutral country. We intended to represent that we were a Sicilian crime organization from Italy and the intention was to use a very experienced undercover agent who spoke Sicilian. That agent unfortunately retired shortly before the investigation started, so at the last minute we had our Sicilian speaker not available. We looked around and decided eventually that I would represent the head of the organization from Sicily. That's a little bit difficult, I obviously don't speak Sicilian. I sometimes struggle with English, but working in concert with three Spanish speaking undercover agents we felt we could overcome the language barrier needed to target the Sinaloa Cartel. The meeting takes place in an ocean front condominium overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Florida. You looked out for miles and miles, beautiful ocean. You take out wine, you take out food, you take out photographs. You turn on a soccer match. We spent a lot of time preparing the room. The room is also equipped with audio and video recording and each agent has a responsibility of knowing where the cameras are, where you want the subjects to sit. So it's pretty much scripted and we went through it carefully. So myself and the three other FBI undercover agents had specific and different roles in this case. The first gentleman that I worked with was a longtime friend of mine who is an expert in transportation. His job was to get contraband from point A to point B and he knew all shipping routes, transportation systems, etc. This gentleman had worked in South Florida for many, many years and had the South Florida look, clothing. He had the Tommy Bahamas and the right sunglasses, the right car. When you work around the country there are certain parts where every criminal looks the same and South Florida is one of those. We had a second gentleman who was named Antonio, he was responsible for our ports in foreign countries. We knew we were going to receive large amounts of cocaine so we had decided that we were going to use ports or shipping as opposed to airlines. So we had ports that we used literally all over the world outside of the United States that we have access to through foreign law enforcement cooperation. And then the third undercover was my underling Patricio, he spoke both Spanish and Italian. He was going to replace me. I was the old man. I was the head of the organization, soon to be retired, he was my right hand man, my most trusted associate. If anyone spoke to me privately it would be Patricio my number two, so again it's very important to set up this dynamic that they see a pecking order. They see a criminal organization that has a chain of command in it. And we have to convince a member of the Sinaloa Cartel we're criminals just like they are. They're very, very cognizant of who appears to be real and who does not, so we had to sell ourselves as a criminal organization and that's why we mirrored many of the same roles that the Sinaloa Cartel had. And representing the Sinaloa Cartel was a gentleman named Manuel Jesus Guzman, who was identified as a blood relative of Chapo Guzman. He would be Chapo's spokesmen during these negotiations. Manuel Guzman entered the United States, we sent the informant to pick him up at the Miami International Airport and deliver him to our ocean front condominium for negotiations. So as we're waiting for the meeting to happen as I said, I was dressed appropriately as a crime boss and I noticed my friends and fellow agents were nervous as was I and it was typical and natural to be nervous. We had a lot expected of us and just prior to Manuel arriving at the condominium I went in to use the men's room and double check everything and I looked behind the door and I found a gaudy purple velour bathrobe that for some reason I thought would fit the scene better. So without telling the other agents I got out of my $5000 suit and I put on this hideous velour bathrobe. I walked out into the room and the place cracked up, everybody went nuts laughing it really broke the ice, everybody calmed down and at first I was gonna go back and change and then I said, "He would never suspect "this is the FBI." So I kept on the purple velour bathrobe for the remainder of the meeting. You have to understand when you're an undercover agent you have to do things that the bad guys don't expect FBI agents would do. Manuel arrives, he was dressed in a business suit as if it was a important business meeting. So Manuel enters the room in the company of the informant, he's now meeting the three undercovers. I'm out on the deck sunning myself in my purple bathrobe and after five or 10 minutes I don't see him coming out where he was supposed to be introduced to me. So I went inside and low and behold we found out that Manuel has a fear of heights, which we didn't know. So here we are 30 stories up on the ocean and he's hunkered down in a corner of the building and he won't come anywhere near the camera range. It took awhile, but we were able to calm him down at least enough to come out and sit on the couch and begin negotiations with us. I make a point of introducing myself and then walking immediately away from him because I don't want to talk to him at that point. You have to understand we set up relationships,