20: Atlantic Drug Highway: The Massive Cocaine Bust Led By British Customs - Told By The Men Who Were There

In April 2026, Europol announced the interception of eight vessels in the Atlantic. Eleven tonnes of cocaine were seized, and 54 people were arrested. They called it a cocaine highway - a sophisticated network moving drugs from Latin America to Europe, deliberately circumventing major ports to avoid detection.It sounded new and unprecedented. But it wasn't.25 years earlier, a team of British and American investigators ran one of the most ambitious international drug enforcement operations ever mounted against the South American cartels. They called it Operation Journey. And this is the story told by the people who lived it.Graham Honey was the British customs investigator who coordinated the operation from a desk in London, running weekly intelligence meetings that combined the DEA, U.S. Customs, British intelligence, and the Royal Navy. He spent two years of his life helping build the case.Nigel Brooks was the U.S. customs special agent who became Graham's closest transatlantic ally. He ran the intelligence operation from Houston, protected a source whose life depended on secrecy, and held back pressure from his own side to blow the operation early. Alberto Morales is the commissioner in charge of the drug unit of the Spanish National Police. He's been fighting the Galician cocaine networks since 1999, the same coastline where Operation Journey's shipments were headed. He explains why Spain is only the door, not the destination.And Luis Navia, one of the men they were hunting, who helped build a shadow shipping network out of Greece, and evaded law enforcement for years. His undoing would eventually come down to one glass of water…Operation Journey netted 22-thousand kilos of cocaine, and dismantled one of the most powerful cocaine trafficking organisations in the world. But did HM Customs really get the credit it deserved? These are the Narco Warriors.New episodes every Monday.If you want to go deeper on Operation Journey, Luis Navia's full story is told in his book Pure Narco, written with Jesse Fink.