OPERATION WHITE TERROR: The Most Daring Sting Operation EVER Mounted By The FBI | Our History

deep in the jungles of colombia a terrorist organization is crushing all opposition a ruthless militia called united self-defense forces of colombia they're known more broadly for their spanish acronym the auct [Applause] their mission to carry out the deadly orders of colombia's cocaine barons [Music] they deploy this army of lethal killers to take out anyone who stands in their way from innocent colombians [Music] to u.s law enforcement fighting in the war against drugs they freely use violence to enforce their will on their enemies the year 2000 they were responsible for 800 assassinations 200 kidnappings several massacres resulting in more than 500 deaths meanwhile in the u.s 157 tons of cocaine pour across the borders every year the bulk of that comes from one country columbia responsible for 90 of the world's cocaine supply [Applause] you're talking about tons and tons and tons coming into the united states in order to fund the auc's activities in the case of the auc dramatic increase in terrorist tactics including kidnappings or murders of civilians caused us to look more closely at this organization but the militia and its leaders are so mysterious that little progress to date has been made in slowing their drug trade or their rule of terror as the 30-year war on drugs rages on u.s officials demand more action in turning the tide you'll fight drug supply and punish those who deal in death the fbi has seven dedicated drug squads 10 men and women each in houston alone all working closely with agents based in colombia 33 year old west point graduate agent mark kirby signs up for one of these crack teams proudly following in the footsteps of his father who had a distinguished career in the bureau the only two things growing up that i ever wanted to do were serving the army as an infantryman and serve as an fbi agent and i've been very fortunate to have the chance to do both of those kirby is based in houston texas along with la and miami in the early 2000s it's a central hub for cocaine trafficking into the us kirby and his team have been working for over four years to identify the top level suppliers moving drugs through houston on september the 10th 2001 in a show of support for colombia's efforts to stamp out drug trafficking secretary of state colin powell brands the auc a foreign terrorist organization the very next day another foreign terrorist organization strikes at the heart of the u.s [Music] overnight the war on drugs takes a back seat to the new war on terror all fbi agents are redirected to focus on possible terrorist activities inside the u.s our office immediately went into crisis management and began interviewing every lead possible as far as terrorist activity every leader every call we addressed it the agents work round the clock fielding thousands of calls from panic-stricken citizens people are reacting to the 911 attacks and saw somebody who looks suspicious [Music] but one unusual call catches the squad's attention german speaker wanted to report some information the caller claims it's vital he meets with an agent as soon as possible it's after 10 p.m and agent mark kirby is about to clock out none of us have had a day off since 9 11 but i knew that it was important and so i went down and had coffee with this guy the man introduces himself as hans gruse he says he's a businessman originally from east germany he claims that since the fall of communism he's built up links to russian organized crime figures immediately the agents are on high alert east germany was part of the former soviet bloc sworn enemies of the us but bruce's contacts could make him an invaluable source kirby decides to hear him out anytime we go and meet people for the first time it's a constant evaluation process of is this going to be a credible person says that in 1999 he started a new life in the united states where he's been trying to set up an import export business so far with little success now with the us under attack he insists he has information about a potential arms deal and feels it's his duty to help his adopted country groose claims that just after 9 11 a friend invited him to a party in houston at the home of a business contact there he says he met a colombian resident of houston who runs a large trucking business he's introduced simply as carlos carlos asks the german to join him on the terrace for a cigar bruce tells him that in the soviet era he lived in russia and speaks russian fluently [Music] the colombian smells a possible business opportunity he claims that he knows people who are looking to buy large caches of weapons and asks bruce if he might be able to connect him to any russian arms dealers after 9 11 this is just the kind of red hot tip that kirby is on the lookout for if there is a colombian in houston who really wants to buy thousands of weapons it would be very significant if it's true and given the size of the proposed purchase kirby strongly suspects that the colombian may be linked to terrorists but kirby has doubts about his informant who is hans gruse then gruse makes one last confession to kirby about his past [Music] he claims he was an officer in the east german army he says he trained in russia and speaks fluent russian he even worked for the stasi the infamous east german secret police i had reason to believe he was based on my conversation with him and his identification from east germany it seemed very professional very matter of fact he was believable he said i probably wouldn't have called in if if 9 11 hadn't happened after the meeting kirby has his agents search for grues in their stasi files his story checks out but bruce's communist past nags away at kirby knowing that he had had a communist background that is certainly a concern for us as opposed to someone who grew up in oklahoma for the fbi trusting this former east german is a huge gamble however bruce's training as an east german spy could work to the fbi's advantage someone who has training as an intelligence officer they're going to have skills that the average person is not going to have we usually look at these situations as having potentially greater risk but also potentially greater upsides and that upside is just as big the possibility of hitting back at the colombian drug lords and halting the flow of illegal weapons to their paramilitary organization [Music] we had him arrange a meeting with carlos at which the plan would be to continue the conversation and to go into more detail it's the opening chess move in a top secret mission known only by its code name operation white terror and it will become one of the biggest and most dangerous stings in fbi history the fbi's informant hans grouse agrees to meet the colombian in downtown houston kirby and his colleagues have set up undercover surveillance to determine whether bruce's story is legitimate [Music] i went in long before the meeting i sat down had coffee and was reading the newspaper a hispanic woman professionally dressed sat down in one of the tables near me i remember we glanced at each other and i went back to reading my paper [Music] after hans cruz and carlos arrive kirby establishes a visual on the colombian so i went in my car and started talking to the other guys on the radio and we sat and waited for the the meeting to conclude bruce is wearing a wire allowing kirby and his colleagues to listen in as he and carlos spend about 40 minutes in deep conversation that conversation at least corroborated for us that there was a man named carlos who claimed to be from colombia who said he had significant connections who were interested in buying weapons but carlos still won't reveal his last name to gruse so as they wait the fbi come up with another way to get it one of the agents was able to figure out the car that carlos arrived in when we ran the license plate number i heard over the radio that it was owned by somebody named carlos romero romero's legitimate business is exporting chemicals from houston to colombia using legitimate trucks he was a colombian national here living legally in the u.s very well educated english speaking but there's a dark side to romero's business i immediately recognized the name maybe a year before he had been the actual importer of six or 800 kilos of cocaine you know now that he is a multi-hundred kilo cocaine importer into the united states you cannot do that without having extremely high connections in the cartels or terrorist groups of colombia if romero's involved it's very likely this proposed deal is for real we knew that romero was in fact communicating with people in colombia however we did not know whether it be a drug cartel or terrorist organization that they belong to but after bruce leaves the meeting the whole operation is suddenly jeopardized hans called me on the phone the hispanic woman who obviously was the woman that i had made eye contact with briefly had told carlos i was obviously a fed if carlos believes her it spells the end of operation white terror the worst case scenario is that they stop negotiating the deal that we're hopefully negotiating [Music] kirby and his team initiate fbi protocol for a potential compromised surveillance situation if you feel like you're spotted by counter surveillance you're what's called burn that doesn't mean you blow the whole operation that means that you remove yourself from the operation and you do it in a way that creates sincere doubt in the mind of that counter surveillance person meanwhile they take comfort from the fact that their target is the real deal knowing that he had deployed counter surveillance that demonstrated that it was at least a professional group of people or he himself was a professional usually organizations when they do counter surveillance they're they're professional and that was a a good telltale sign that we were we were going the right direction while they wait hans groose meets the feds to plot how they might use romero to get to his bosses i remember after this getting together with all the guys who were working it and i think we were all pretty excited to know what hans had told us that first night is probably true from the evidence of the previous year's cocaine seizure kirby is confident that romero is connected to very significant cocaine distributors in colombia we knew that romero was in fact communicating with people in colombia whether it be a drug cartel or a terrorist organization that they belong to whoever carlos reports to the fbi is determined to hit them and hit them hard the fbi's goal at the outset of an investigation of an organization is to identify to the greatest extent possible the entire organization and then to gather evidence that will enable us to disrupt or dismantle that organization fearing their cover is blown the fbi pulled back completely letting romero go without being tailed now they can only wait to see if they've lost their prey for good they may be very suspicious they may even slow down or cool off for a few days but in my experience they have eventually continued on with the negotiations and kirby's instincts prove right on the money a couple of days after the meeting carlos calls bruce operation white terror is still on the next step for the fbi is to find out who romero is buying the weapons for to do this they create a deep and credible backstory for their informant hans gruse we wanted to present hans as a participant in a organized crime group that could provide weaponry to this group [Music] we needed to do something to show that we were serious to boost the german's credentials as an arms dealer the fbi produces a cd with a vast inventory of weapons we compiled basically a sales pitch so we put together photographs of a wide array of eastern bloc soviet warsaw pact weapons the ak-47s an ak-74 is the weapon of choice in most of the world so the vast majority were that type of weapon and literally everything in between machine guns hand grenades ammunition for all these weapons with this extensive catalogue groos sets up a make or break sales meeting with romero at a lavish texas country club romero asks a business contact to come along his name is jensen it was at his house that gruce first met romero jensen has no criminal history but is on the lookout for business opportunities i've just been fired from my last job they closed their office so it was a good timing jensen is a 66 year old dane in the 1970s he'd been a politician and a member of an extreme right-wing danish party in the early 80s jensen spent two years in colombia working in the coal business along the way he made key contacts in business and politics he makes no secret of his support for the right-wing militia the auc who protect the business interests of the drug barons i did not consider them a foreign terror organization in 1990 jensen settled permanently in the us working for a company selling lucrative environmental protection equipment fluent in spanish and german jensen's a useful go-between at this illicit meeting romero wanted me to be there at most of the meetings because of the bad english the germans spoke but when they they needed me i came to the fbi's knowledge this is the first time jensen has been involved in an illegal activity jensen viewed this as a one-off opportunity to make a sum of money which would allow him to retire comfortably the fbi stationed an agent with a long-distance lens in the grounds of the country club you want to have the pictures because you want to have evidence of the meat with a time which goes along with whatever is recorded to say that yes it was these two people who met at this time and they talked about this thing otherwise you don't have the correct chain of evidence to ever bring something to trial hans gruse arrives with the targets romero and jensen they take their drinks outside and choose a table only meters from the fbi photographer if they're sitting there in a very suspicious meet to trade drugs for weapons and they see someone with a telephoto lens taking pictures of them that operation is blown the agent's luck holds the targets don't spot the photographer the team equipped gruese with a specially designed cell phone to secretly record the conversation the informant used an old trick where they just put all of their stuff out of their pockets on the table which is pretty typical of a business person [Music] agent kirby knows all too well that this setup could go very wrong at any moment if the subjects found out that what we're pretending exists doesn't exist they can respond to that in in numerous ways the worst of which would be to kill that person they all hold their breath while romero looks through the inventory finally the colombian nods his head he's sold it's understood that payment for the weapons will be made in cocaine that bruce will then sell via his criminal contacts [Music] but after three meetings hans gruse still can't tell kirby for whom romero's working in a last-ditch effort to find out the fbi decide to tail him we followed carlos romero to the airport in houston and our surveillance detected that he had the cd secreted in a magazine romero catches a flight to mexico there the fbi enlists local law enforcement officers to pick up the trail eventually they see him mail the cd we knew this cd-rom had been mailed to people in colombia we knew that we were on to something the meetings and the recordings on bruce's cell phone alone are enough to indict the colombian and the dane on charges of criminal conspiracy we had plenty of evidence to establish the fact that romero and jensen were trying to broker this weapons deal but putting these two front men behind bars now means giving up on identifying and capturing the colombian strongmen behind the deal should we end it here and be satisfied with what we have or should we move on the longer the game goes on the greater the risk that romero may realize he's been set up [Music] but if they don't take the risk now they may never learn who their real enemies are the old saying a bird in hands worth two in the bush we wanted the bird in the hand and two in the bush the high stakes call will bring them face to face with some of the deadliest men on earth [Music] but the agents still have no idea who these men are romero is smart and careful to make sure his phone calls can't be monitored well he bought these telephone cards all the time and so he thought he was safe to use that instead of his his telephone but the team outwits romero by putting a wiretap not on his phone but on their informants and screws they wait to see if romero will reveal the names of his colombian contacts in calls to grues the team also gets a warrant to hack into romero's email account and mine it for information we've spent many hours trying to find the email communications that carlos was having with the people in colombia and we were never successful neither the wiretap nor the hack deliver any useful information frustrated with the lack of progress kirby decides it's time for a much bigger play to make groos seem even more credible as an arms-dealing middleman in the russian underworld he brings a new agent into the operation we had hans begin talking about his boss the general idea of alex had been planted to play the part of bruce's boss alex the fbi hire a retired police officer to work alongside him because alex is one of us he's able to to see the horizon so to speak and he's able to navigate in discussions he's able to control things a little better he was an extremely experienced undercover who had been born in the former soviet union and was a fluent russian speaker alex was presented as an individual involved in organized crime upper echelon crime figure but alex must be more than just a name the colombians will want evidence he actually exists you might seed information in the uh russian underground or or in some places where if the person were to go check their references in the criminal underground they would say oh yeah i've heard of that guy the more significant they believed him to be that would motivate them to actually provide more information about the subjects in colombia than in reality maybe they needed to [Music] the fbi now set their telling bruce to invite romero to a meeting with his boss the russian arms dealer the venue is a luxury hotel in houston there are a couple reasons to meet in a hotel one it's a it's a public space that allows this these pockets of privacy all of the rooms you can control the environment the agents arrive early to set up we had lined up certain rooms at a hotel in which the meeting would actually occur and another room where the rest of us could be they're sure they've covered all the bases so they're stunned with the news they get from the front desk the rooms were not ready the team has timed everything down to the minute now all that precise planning is about to go up in smoke carlos is due to arrive at a certain time alexander who he believes is flying in was due to be there at a certain time kirby's mind is racing this organizational mess up could blow the whole operation what is hans gonna tell romero are we going to meet somewhere else is the story going to be the plane got diverted scrambling to come up with a solution the hotel manager offers kirby the presidential suite this was one of those instances where murphy's law actually came out on the plus side for us we wanted romero to really believe the undercover alexander was a very significant person in the presidential suite really played into our scenario the agents move fast to get the room rigged for the meeting with only minutes to spare everything is ready [Music] now it's up to alexander to convince romero he's a russian arms dealer well anytime you set up a meeting with an undercover and a subject who's involved in criminal activity there's just inherent risk there's a reason why we're required to be armed wherever we go after the first few minutes of conversation the agents sense romero isn't convinced we needed to change something during the course of the meetings so kirby takes another calculated gamble as part of his fbi training he's learned to speak russian so he calls alexander and starts speaking to him in russian in case romero can hear him through the receiver it convinced romero that it's a real organization because alex had a conversation in russia the ploy works romero is sold he now reveals that his contacts in colombia have seen the weapons catalogue on the cd and want to move forward with the deal we wanted romero to leave the meeting with alex believing that he was dealing with someone very significant someone who he was probably afraid of and someone who he ultimately would not want to let down everything that we were doing in this was because he already showed he's the one who brought up that he wanted to do the exchange of cocaine for weapons we wanted to to take him down that road as far as we can so that he would commit over at acts and reveal his organization to us so far so good the elaborate ruse has paid off but the colombian still refuses to give up the names of his contacts but introducing alexander into the game gives the fbi a solution to the long-standing problem of hacking into romero's emails [Music] we had a couple of our computer specialists sitting with us and at one point one of the agents on that squad said something that all of us were kind of surprised by he said if you can't defeat the way they're doing it make them do it another way the computer agent has a simple but brilliant idea they couldn't get into the email account so they just got him to create a new one they made him fear about using his email account romero cautious to the bone easily falls into their trap we simply created an email system and they believed that it was so much safer than what they had been doing and they started using that system the agents still can't listen in on romero's calls but now they have access to his emails and within a couple of weeks that breaks the case wide open we we learned two names that we were dealing with and that was the camadante emilio and commandante napo the title commandante immediately tells kirby that romero's bosses are not drug barons but the leaders of their paramilitary militia that immediately let us know that we were talking about the auc so that made the risks and the dangers very significant to catch the auc comandantes operation white terror will have to draw them out of their lair in the colombian jungle [Music] but the fbi's informant hans groose delivers another bombshell from the deal's colombian middleman carlos romero these two commanders napo and emilio said we will not discuss anything further nor will we meet anyone until our people have inspected the weapons they don't want to give up their product unless they know they're going to get their weapons agent kirby now faces a monumental challenge to meet the auc's demands to inspect actual weapons these weapons don't exist if we can get them we're certainly not going to show them to two terrorists potentially this could be over [Music] but we wanted to find a way to do it kirby knows he's going to need more than a photo inventory of a weapons arsenal to lure the auc comandantes out of the jungle he needs to stage the real thing an authentic and impressive arms show and he must find a credible location to do it first there were only certain places in a very limited number where we would be comfortable conducting the operation but that the colombians would also be comfortable traveling to and operating in the fbi zero in on saint croix one of the us virgin islands it's a u.s territory but also a haven for drug traffickers but first he must persuade his political masters to let him arrange a meeting after two months of planning kirby's team get the green light it's a great feeling to know that we're going to attempt to do this we established a plan where we flew in at night with the weapons the show is set up in an abandoned warehouse the fbi ship in cases of real weapons from former warsaw pact countries which they borrow from the defense department the agents load in under cover of darkness anybody could get suspicious if they see a bunch of you know cases being unloaded or whatever basically we could burn ourselves it was a lot of weapons we felt like it was sufficient to show that we were really what we were trying to present to them you need to pull in the big fish so you use a lot of bait we probably had over 70 agents involved you know from the logistical parts of it to the surveillance to the undercovers the colombians land at the local airstrip three miles away the agents are ready for them with cameras and listening devices set up in a room above the warehouse officers are armed and ready in case the auc attempt to hijack the fully functional weapons these were real weapons there was a significant risk to the fbi if these weapons got out a colombian weapons inspector is traveling with alex and carlos weapons inspector she came in i believe she was using the alias name raquel raquel will assess whether her bosses the two auc comandantes should buy the fbi's arsenal her reaction is critical [Music] i saw her on the video camera because i was upstairs [Music] the agents worry that the auc bodyguard may scope out the rest of the warehouse and discover them it was a tense time it's risky and if you slip you might be dead [Music] after what seems like hours raquel finally declares she's satisfied with what she's seen when you see the colombians take off and get to take that first deep breath and sigh it's a great feeling but we knew we had a lot more to go [Music] while raquel reports to her two bosses that the weapons are genuine the fbi must put their next part of the plan in motion luring the terrorists themselves out of colombia and into their final trap we moved to the next stage which was demanding this face-to-face meeting with these two colombian terrorist commanders but that's proving close to impossible napo and emilio had already told romero they would never leave columbia and they would never go to the same place at the same time if we were able to get one of them out and arrest him we would never see the second the fbi has come up with a way to persuade both terrorists to leave colombia together we knew that we had to offer them something that was too good to turn down the fbi's informant hans gruse has a brainwave to solve one of the auc's biggest logistical challenges moving weapons deep into the colombian jungle they bring them by ship to the mouth of a river and then use manual labor that would require several days to hand carry these crates of weapons up these rivers into the jungle bruce suggests dangling some irresistible bait the fake russian crime boss alex will first offer to fly the colombians in his private plane to cuba there he will deliver all the weapons as well as an old soviet landing craft in which they can ship the arms right into the jungle groose tells the fbi they should even send a photo of the landing craft to help convince the colombians hans copied it off the internet all of us looked at each other and said that's probably the dumbest idea i've ever heard in my life it may be far-fetched but it's the best plan they've come up with kirby decides to give it a go the next thing we knew napo and emilio had agreed the promise of a private plane flight and a landing craft for the weapons was clearly too tempting for the comandantes to resist now the fbi must line up a location for the final takedown [Music] certainly not going to go to the u.s where they could potentially be arrested they settle on costa rica local officials will cooperate with the u.s law enforcement and help extradite the targets to the u.s but it's close enough to colombia for emilio and napo to feel safe the meeting is set up at a hotel in the capital san jose the success or failure of one of the most complex and dangerous operations ever conducted by the fbi hangs in the balance agent kirby has staked his career and the reputation of the fbi on the outcome you've done a lot of things to prepare for this but until they actually walk in the hotel room no one was going to be confident this was actually going to happen [Music] at midday the colombians show up at the hotel as planned [Music] costa rican law enforcement armed to the teeth are in position waiting for the takedown call from kirby then suddenly the fbi agents spot an unexpected snag i sat in absolute horror someone had tipped off the media that these arrests were going to take place if the commandantes see the camera cruise operation white terror will be instantly exposed but kirby's luck holds before the commandantes realize what's happening the team moves in to take them down [Music] there is actually news footage of the arrest when it happened the three colombians romero emilio and napo are thrown into a costa rican jail awaiting extradition back in houston uve jensen the danish businessman is also arrested [Music] a year-long operation involving over 70 agents across six countries has ended in triumph it was definitely the first really quality feeling of satisfaction all the stressful things had been successful and most importantly everybody was safe everybody was high-fiving and congratulations great work with the recorded meetings the emails and phone calls the evidence against the colombians is overwhelming ultimately that's why all these defendants pled guilty there were no trials in this investigation the three colombians are extradited to the united states between 2002 and 2004 in the federal courthouse in houston texas the defendants are convicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and providing material support to a terrorist organization [Music] the loss of these two senior commandantes is a body blow to the auc and a major victory in the war on drugs we had certainly gone further than any previous investigation had ever gone in terms of the height within the organization it's an incredible feeling of accomplishment

Channel: Our History

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Id: wg7wuAdE3-c

Length: 47min 1sec (2821 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 13 2021