Gotcha – agent tells how he caught El Chapo
UNITED STATES: After three years on the trail of Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Drew Hogan finally came face to face with El Chapo.
Mexican Marines had just stormed a hotel suite in the city of Mazatlan, and as Hogan drove into the garage beneath the building, ‘‘they were just standing him up’’, he recalls. ‘‘I ran right up to him and jumped into his face and said the first thing that came into my head: ‘What’s up, Chapo?’ ’’
Hogan has now identified himself as a special agent for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He was a player in the years-long effort to bring the drug kingpin to justice, and his memoir, Hunting El Chapo, is released this week. It is part of a glut of film, TV and book projects on the chase and capture of Joaquin Guzman as the alleged leader of the Sinaloa cartel prepares to stand trial.
‘‘It was time to be proud of what I had done and what my teammates had accomplished. It was about two countries coming together to achieve something great,’’ Hogan said.
The special agent, from Kansas, started work as a county deputy before moving to the DEA. He moved to Mexico City to head its Sinaloa cartel desk and began to penetrate the network around El Chapo (The Little One), intercepting thousands of coded text messages and steadily drawing nearer to the man at the top.
In raids on safe houses, Hogan was surprised at how simply the 165cm multibillionaire lived. ‘‘He afforded himself almost no luxury,’’ he said. The homes had plastic tables and chairs.
When Mexican Marines stormed a house in Mazatlan in February 2014, a door that took time to break down enabled El Chapo to slip away. Days later, Hogan, wearing one of El Chapo’s caps he had taken as a souvenir during a raid, sat in his car outside the Hotel Miramar as the Marines broke down the door of a suite.
‘‘I was worried about him escaping us again,’’ he said. ‘‘[Then] I heard excited radio chatter – they got him.’’ When he confronted El Chapo, ‘‘his eyes kind of bulged out. Our eyes locked there, for a second. Then they threw him in the back of my car’’.
Guzman escaped again in 2015, via a tunnel dug to his prison shower. Recaptured in 2016, he was extradited to a prison in Manhattan to await trial this year.
– The Times