"You got me now," Lehder told the DEA agents aboard.
.
.
The plane stopped to refuel in Cuba, where the army base was locked-down due to Lehder's high profile. The DEA agents offered Lehder a cigarette.
.
.
"No, that's all right. I only smoke marijuana."
.
.
On February 5, 1987 at 2 am, the Aero Commander landed at Tampa International Airport, where it was immediately surrounded by agents with shotguns and automatic weapons. Lehder was rushed into a car. A convoy of armed agents escorted Lehder to a federal courthouse. His mugshot was taken.
.
.
In the morning, Lehder appeared in court, smiling. "I don't have any money."
.
.
"Is the information true?" a magistrate said.
.
.
"Yes, Your Honour. Most of my assets were frozen by the government of Colombia."
.
.
Facing a maximum sentence of life without parole plus 135 years, Lehder was assigned a public defender. The US Attorney demanded that no bail be set because there had been death threats made against judges.
.
.
"That's a lie!" Lehder yelled.
.
.
"He has said if he were caught, he'd kill a federal judge a week until he's freed," said the US Assistant Attorney.
.
.
At a hearing on February 9, Lehder claimed to have no access to any money.
.
.
"Are you aware that your watch is worth approximately $6,000?" the US Attorney said.
.
.
"No."
.
.
"Your Honour," Lehder's public defender said, "we understand that he [Lehder] was turned into the police by an underworld figure: Pablo Escobar." No evidence was offered to back up her claim.
.
.
Lehder was refused bail. On the basis that Lehder had earned $300 million in 1979 and 1980, the IRS slapped a $70 million lien on him.
.
.
In a response mailed to Colombian newspapers, Pablo conceded that he'd had "personal quarrels with Lehder on several occasions, but these would not lead me to perform such a low and cowardly act as to betray him to the authorities." Pablo believed that Lehder's public defender had initiated a "plan to attack my moral and personal integrity."
.
.
In Marion, Illinois, Lehder was housed in the highest-security federal prison in the country. Then he was transferred to Talladega, Alabama. Although in isolation, he was disturbed by a neighbour who "spent much of the night and day yelling and emitting unintelligible guttural sounds." His lawyers com- plained that he "was unable to sleep day or night because of the incessant noise." He ended up in Atlanta on a maximum security floor with empty cells. On the floors below him, 1,800 Cubans from the Mariel Boat-lift disturbed his sleep. "Primal screams punctuate the air minute by minute, from time to time the din is so pervasive that one cannot hear himself think."
.
.
Eventually, Lehder hired two high-priced lawyers. Without his lawyers' consent, he sent a letter to George HW Bush on which the Miami Herald reported: "Accused Colombian Drug Chief's Offer To Cooperate Described As Frivolous."
.
.
His lawyers issued a statement: "It is absolutely false beyond any doubt that Carlos Lehder is cooperating. This letter [to George HW Bush] is to some degree the product of his solitary confinement."
.
.
Frustrated with Lehder for thwarting his plan to murder him by getting arrested, George Jung was amused by Lehder's letter to George HW Bush. Previously, Jung had refused to cooperate. But with Lehder in custody, Jung couldn't resist the opportunity to get revenge. After contacting the FBI, he wrote a letter about Lehder.
.
.
Despite the authorities bracing for a violent response to Lehder's extradition, none came, leading them to wonder what the cartel was up to.
.
.
Behind the scenes, cartel lawyers were busy battling the legality of extradition. On June 25, 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that the president had acted unconstitutionally by resigning the extradition legislation. Without going on a murderous rampage, the cartel had won its battle against extradition. The US authorities were appalled.
.
.
In custody, Lehder described the day of extradition reversal as the happiest of his life. He blamed his extradition on "the burial of a Supreme Court that had sold out to imperialist interests." He mistakenly thought that with extradition ruled illegal, he would be returned to Colombia.
.
.
On July 22, 1987, three requests for the provisional arrest of Pablo were dismissed as unenforceable. Citing a lack of evidence, a judge withdrew orders for the arrest of Pablo and Gacha for the murder of Cano. Citing improper methods of obtaining evidence, a judge dismissed Pablo's indictment for Lara's murder. Now Pablo's only outstanding cases dated back to the 1970s, and all of the witnesses were dead. With their legal difficulties behind them, the remaining big three factions of the Medellín cartel started to regain their strength.
.
.
Thirty-eight-year-old Lehder arrived for trial on November 17, 1987. Wearing a tailored suit and with his hair freshly cut, he grinned at reporters. During the proceedings, he took notes and ate sweets. Three armed US marshals sat behind him.
.
.
"This case will take you back in time to 1974," the US Attorney said, "and forward over the course of many years in which Carlos Lehder pursued a singular dream, a singular vision, to be the king of cocaine transportation…. He was to cocaine transportation what Henry Ford was to automobiles….. He saw America as a decadent society. He saw cocaine as the wave of the future in the US, reeling from Watergate and Vietnam, particularly susceptible to the seductive allure of cocaine."
.
.
Lehder's lawyers portrayed him as a Colombian whom American smugglers - now turned informants against him - had preyed on. "Lehder was his own worst enemy. He was a young wealthy brash Colombian, flamboyant, to say the least. He confronted the DEA with his mouth."
.
.
Numerous of Lehder's cohorts testified against him. Even the TV personality, Walter Cronkite, described getting threatened at Norman's Cay.
.
.
Jung took the stand, a small man with long brown hair. While he detailed his story, his wizened face lit up. He smiled often as if savouring his revenge. The cross-examination was structured to trip Jung up.
.
.
"Knowing you to have used people before when it fits your interest, would you be using Mr Lehder in this case in order to lower your prison sentence maybe?"
.
.
"Do you really believe that?" Jung said.
.
.
"I'm asking the questions."
.
.
"Then, no..."
.
.
"And when you wrote down that you had been to Pablo Escobar's farm numerous times weren't you trying to sort of puff up your importance in this case, to see if you can get a better deal, better letter from the government, to see if they will reduce your parole and your sentence? Were you trying to do that, knowing Pablo Escobar to be somebody who has been publicised?"
.
.
"No. I didn't have to expand my role. I was married into a Colombian family that is tied in to people down there. That was well known. I didn't have to exaggerate my role. I mean, I was arrested in 1985 with 660 pounds of cocaine, and, in essence, they suddenly confiscated more on the airstrip, close to 3,000 pounds of cocaine. I don't believe that I had to exaggerate my role with 3,000 pounds of cocaine."
.
.
After the testimonies of 115 witnesses, the jury heard even more damning evidence: recordings from some of Lehder's interviews over the years, in which he described himself as a poor Colombian peasant who had made something of himself.
.
.
From June 28, 1983: "This was our obligation, to bring the dollars back to our people however we could. So then, that is it. It can be called Mafia. It can be called syndicate. It can be called a bonanza. It can be called whatever you like, but the truth is that it is a fact, and it is out in the open. In other words, Colombia would not be able to deny that it was the world's foremost producer of marijuana and cocaine." At fault was the US, "where there are forty-million marijuana smokers and twenty-five million cocaine consumers.... What I ask that they do is help the Colombian drug addict that they themselves corrupted."
.
.
.