Taking down Colombia's "super cartel"
SOURCE CITED: CBS 60 MINUTES
A behind-the-scenes look at the investigation that took down the most powerful drug trafficking organization in law enforcement history. Lara Logan reports.
The following is a script from "The Super Cartel" which aired on Nov. 18, 2012, and was rebroadcast on June 16, 2013. Lara Logan is the correspondent. Howard L. Rosenberg, producer.
We're about to take you behind the scenes of a three-year investigation that took down the most powerful drug trafficking organization in law enforcement history.
Bigger than both the Cali and the Medellin cartels combined, more powerful than the infamous Pablo Escobar - this was a Colombian cocaine empire with a reach so vast, and profits so great, it became known as "the super cartel."
Sworn to secrecy until we first broadcast the story last fall, our 60 Minutes team was given unprecedented access to the investigation as it was unfolding.
Colombian national police worked alongside agents from ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, whose job, among other things, is to prevent contraband from moving across U.S. borders.
The amount of cocaine and money the super cartel smuggled was incomprehensible and it took authorities by surprise.
U.S. ICE agents first got a glimpse of what they were up against when they arrived here in September 2009: the sprawling, Pacific coast port of Buenaventura, Colombia.
