Interview with Jason Fox for Inside the Real Narcos

25 July 2018

 

Interview with Jason Fox for Inside the Narcos

Explain a little bit about your new series, inside the Narcos.

The production company, Plum, came to me and said they had an idea about me going to Miami and hanging out with drug dealers, living in South Beach and making a documentary about the drugs scene there, we’ll call it Miami Vice! I thought “That sounds awesome!” and so signed up to it. And then somehow it became a show where I disappear to really dangerous places in South America! It caught me by surprise! Although, joking apart, it is more interesting, and I get to go back and take an unbiased look at the world of drugs. I’m not there to judge anyone. It was fascinating, meeting the sorts of people I’d have been hunting down back in the old days. I quite enjoy meeting people, regardless of what they do!

Did putting a human face to people working in the drug trade give you a degree of sympathy for them? You seemed to get on with some of them pretty well.

I suppose I was aware that people involved in that trade don’t always have a choice. To then meet them and see who they are as people and talk about their lives, you can’t help but warm to individuals if you spend any time with them.

Most of them seem to live a miserable, fearful life, don’t they?

There’s not a lot of glamour involved, and I think the people that do live the life are what people associate with the drug trade – the El Chapos and the Escobars. But those people you’ll probably never get to meet. With that in mind, even people like Escobar – he still got shot dead, even at the top of his game. All in all, there’s obviously glamour in it somewhere, but you’re only ever one step away from getting shot or arrested. So it’s a fearful existence no matter what level you’re at.

If you’d seen the human side of these people back when you were in the SAS, would it have been more difficult for you to go on operations against them?

No. I knew what the score was then, I had a job to do, and when you’ve got a job to do you have to enter into it. It’s difficult, because the human being in me would like to say yes, but having done that sort of work in the past, I know that if I’m doing a job I will enter into it wholeheartedly. I like to think I would still get on and do a job professionally.

Why did people who are heavily involved in the drugs trade and are very secretive, and in fear for their lives, agree to be filmed?

I think there’s a few reasons. One was intrigue in me – they knew my background – we were very open and honest about who I was and what I’d done, so there was an element of intrigue, it wasn’t just another journalist. Secondly, they’re organised criminals, which means they’ve got an ego and they like to feed it, and talk about how good they are at whatever it is they do. And I think thirdly, for some of them, it was like a bit of therapy for them for the shit that they do. They can talk about it and get it off their chests a little bit.

As well as going in with the drugs gangs themselves, you were also embedded with security forces at times. What did you think about them?

They were good, it’s just that I’ve come from a very highly trained unit that is proud of what it does, and endeavours to excel at whatever it does. Yeah, they were lacking in some skills, they don’t have as much money, they don’t have as much training. They were decent people, highly motivated, it’s just their tactical awareness was lacking in areas. The Colombian security guys who we spent a little bit of time with actually seemed pretty switched on. Considering how poor Peru is, their military was reasonably well equipped, they were just lacking in the amount of training they had.

In this programme, you don’t play it safe at all, do you?

No. We sat down every day before going to film a sequence to assess the risk, figure out what could go wrong, and what we could do to mitigate any risks. Myself and Aldo, who was behind the scenes, a very good friend of mine, an ex-marine who does a lot of this stuff, we would work out where we would hide or take cover if we needed to, what to do with the rest of the crew, that sort of the thing. We wanted to push this thing a little bit further than most series, but without making it to the point where we would all die and everybody would be sad and we’d have no series.

Were there ever any moments when you were genuinely in fear for your life?

I don’t know whether I was in fear for my life. There were some sketchy moments throughout, we got chased at times, or people might have been getting a bit riled and it looked like it was going to kick off a little bit, but the main one I remember was in Mexico, when I was doing the interview with a Sinaloa cartel lieutenant (who was in charge of protecting the family of cartel boss, El Chapo).The build up to that interview was edgy as fuck, and that one was when I was most anxious. I was a little bit more switched on and alert, and a bit more worried about their response. They were seriously paranoid, they were worried about who we were, and to top it off, they were taking gear every six seconds as well. It didn’t bode well for a nice, friendly atmosphere.

Of the three countries, do you get an impression of which one is the most deeply affected by this issue?

They’re all troubled, and each one has its own character, so the problems are a bit different. Peru’s rustic and poor, Colombia’s edgy, but in a different way – it’s really difficult to get into the cartels, it’s really difficult to get into the law enforcement, because the cartels are a bit more grown up and law-enforcement are mega-switched on and trained up by US and British people. And so both sides of the drugs war there are really switched on and mega-edgy. Whereas you go to Mexico, and it is so dangerous, but the cartels run the show, so there is no edginess. It’s just “If you fuck around, we’ll kill you.” So as long as you don’t do anything you shouldn’t be doing, or go anywhere you shouldn’t be going, you’re normally all right. But you know if it goes wrong, it’s going to go seriously wrong. If we’d have got into trouble in Peru, we’d have probably got a really good hiding. In Colombia, we might have got shot. In Mexico, we’d have been chopped up. As far as is there any country that’s particularly screwed, Mexico is a long way from sorting itself out at the moment.

You talk at one point about the danger being quite exciting. Did you get a buzz from it, and was it the same sort of buzz you used to get in the SAS?

I did get a buzz, it’s not exactly the same, because the dynamics are completely different, but definitely working in a small team, going to places that are edgy, having to be hyper-vigilant, I enjoy all of those things. There is a similarity, but it’s not identical.

On a personal level, how did you find making what is, to all intents and purposes, your first documentary series? Is that an area you’d like to explore more in the future?

I loved it, I honestly really loved every aspect of it, from the planning through the discussion with the execs in London about what I wanted to do and what they wanted to do, to doing the shoot and being involved with the safety aspect, to the post-production, looking at the edits, making sure things were accurate, and also doing the voiceover. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it, and hope to do a lot more if it all goes well. Outside of the military, it’s one of the best things I’ve done.

Lastly, having made this series, you’re better placed than most to answer this: What should we be doing in the war against drugs?

From what I saw, it is a long way from being fixed. There needs to be investment in poor communities, education, and there needs to be legitimate business for the people who are sucked into the drug trade, they need to get rid of corruption at all levels, in authority and government. That’s one of the main reasons the war is there, the cartels are taking advantage of gaps that are made by governments.

 

Meet the Drug Lords: Inside the Real Narcos TX's on Thursday 2nd August at 9pm