‘El Chapo’ tells of scary pursuit of drug lord
In 2001, when Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious Mexican drug lord known as “El Chapo,” made his first legendary escape from custody hiding in a laundry cart, Andrew Hogan was a small-town Kansas kid dreaming of playing college football and becoming a state trooper.
Thirteen years later, Hogan and El Chapo dramatically came face to face, weapons drawn, in an underground parking garage in the Sinaloa city of Mazatlán.
How the former Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who led the years-long manhunt in Mexico to capture El Chapo got to that moment in his life is the captivating first-person account Hogan tells in “Hunting El Chapo.”
The book, written with Douglas Century and subtitled “The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World’s Most-Wanted Drug Lord,” begins in 2009, when Hogan has moved on from being a county deputy in Kansas to a DEA agent.
In a series of suspenseful adventures, he and DEA partner Diego Contreras first take down a major marijuana operation that’s laundering millions of dirty dollars though Phoenix businesses. They then embed themselves in multimillion-dollar deals that take them to Panama City and eventually connect them to El Chapo’s impenetrable Sinaloa cartel.
In 2011, committed to nailing El Chapo, Hogan becomes head of the DEA’s Sinaloa Cartel desk in Mexico City. This dangerous assignment is where you’d expect the thick of the action. But other than a fizzled raid and scary moments on the streets, the book takes a long turn here from being a crime thriller to a mundane cop procedural.
To uncover El Chapo’s secret lairs, Hogan and his team methodically track thousands of cellphone texts intercepted from El Chapo’s complex communications system — a multilayered maze of encrypted devices, code words and nicknames hiding the cartel’s real communications.
While this relentless police work becomes Hogan’s obsession and leads to El Chapo’s arrest, the book dives into it so deeply that it becomes a tedious techie paper chase. Fortunately, drama reignites when Hogan, the DEA and an elite force of Mexican marines hunt down El Chapo in Mazatlán.
“Hunting El Chapo” has other flaws, though none fatal. The narrative often is overbearing with bravado and machismo. Hogan neglects to inform readers that he has a family until moving his wife and young sons to Mexico City.
El Chapo, who was extradited to the United States, has pleaded not guilty to a 17-count indictment in U.S. federal court in Brooklyn charging him overseeing a multibillion-dollar international drug trafficking operation that laundered money (including in the U.S.) and oversaw a ruthless campaign of murders and kidnappings. It also calls for a $14 billion forfeiture in drug proceeds.
With El Chapo’s trial now six months away, expect all kinds of media. Coming in October is the memoir of the former DEA deputy administrator who oversaw years of tracking El Chapo. Meanwhile, Netflix’s series “El Chapo” is in its second season; a film version of Don Winslow’s 2015 novel “The Cartel” is in the works; and Sony has snapped up rights to make Hogan’s book into a movie.
But, for now, at least, this may be the most authentic glimpse inside the world of El Chapo — because Hogan actually went there and did what few thought possible.