21: Living With The Beast: British Customs Officers On The Front Line Of Colombia's Cartel Wars

This is what it means for British drug liaison officers who live with the beast.By the mid-1990s, a small and largely unknown cadre of British customs officers were living and working at the heart of the global cocaine trade. Not in surveillance vans in south London, but in Colombia, sending their children to school in armored cars, carrying sidearms for protection, and running informants in a country where the choice for many was simple: “lead or silver.”In this episode, insider Steve Reynolds takes us inside the Drug Liaison Officer network at its most intense. The brutality of the Cali and Medellin cartels, and the operation that put seven and a half tonnes of cocaine on the front pages of every Spanish newspaper. A record that stood for more than 25 years.Joining Reynolds are Narco Warriors resident experts Phil Matthews and Graham Honey, two of the most senior figures ever to run Britain's drug intelligence operations abroad.These are the Narco Warriors.New Episodes every Monday.