Speaker 1: Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. What follows
Speaker 1: is some bonus content from mister Happy Miles on is
Speaker 1: dealing with the DEA and others on the task force
Speaker 1: fighting the War on drugs in the nineteen seventies in Miami.
Speaker 1: Mister Miles says there was absolute overlap with law enforcement
Speaker 1: and the opposing side of the battle in terms of corruption,
Speaker 1: and that he had a front row seat to it
Speaker 1: during his pre smuggling days as the commodore of the
Speaker 1: Adventurers Club in Coconut Grove.
Speaker 2: My want for people to realize that people in governments
Speaker 2: shouldn't be able to come in and destroy your livelihood,
Speaker 2: in your way of life without any recourse. It's just wrong.
Speaker 2: It's wrong. You're cooperating with them. And because Congress has
Speaker 2: in fit to grant them funding, they in turn have
Speaker 2: the right of seizure, and so they don't care if
Speaker 2: you're doing anything wrong or not. They just want to
Speaker 2: seize whatever they can so they can get funding to
Speaker 2: put gas in the DEA vehicles, to have people come
Speaker 2: in that can put you out of business in our heartbeat,
Speaker 2: and do it with impunity. It's wrong. It's terribly wrong.
Speaker 2: I mean they can lie to you. They can do
Speaker 2: anything they want to in an interrogation to try and
Speaker 2: tick trick you into admitting something or saying something improper
Speaker 2: that can be used against you. And now that's okay.
Speaker 2: People realize why I ever got into the business, and uh,
Speaker 2: it was because I was basically pushed into the business
Speaker 2: to survive. You know, it's like a sinking ship. You
Speaker 2: jump off of it, you get in a raft and
Speaker 2: hope she'll survive.
Speaker 3: So you contend that until the DEA approached you, you
Speaker 3: were a legitimate businessman.
Speaker 2: Exactly. I mean, it wasn't just DEA, it was it
Speaker 2: was FBI, it was DEA, it was I, R, S
Speaker 2: and H and the state police. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: the whole task force. And then they came in and said, hey,
Speaker 2: we might seize happ these airplanes, and we're putting you
Speaker 2: on notice, so if we do seize them, we can
Speaker 2: keep them.
Speaker 3: But what do you think placed you on their radar?
Speaker 3: Was it Jack Devo?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, I think that active vote was using my airplanes.
Speaker 1: Did they claim that you knew what he was doing
Speaker 1: with your planes?
Speaker 2: Well, they acted like I either knew or was part of.
Speaker 3: It, and did you know? Were you part of Oh?
Speaker 2: I wasn't part of it, and I didn't know.
Speaker 1: But to save his planes from being repossessed by the bank,
Speaker 1: Happy says, he turned to smuggling.
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't want to my company to go under
Speaker 2: and disappoint everybody who had given me money to have
Speaker 2: the right to sail and fly. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a little thing called honor, which very few of
Speaker 2: these guys have. I had enough fun afterwards, which I
Speaker 2: would have probably never had and never had that kind
Speaker 2: of money if I hadn't gotten into the business. So
Speaker 2: anyway I at all equals itself out.
Speaker 1: Happy says. Once he retired from smuggling, he was asked
Speaker 1: to share his insight with law enforcement on how the
Speaker 1: war on drugs could be won.
Speaker 2: I once gave a lecture to people from all over
Speaker 2: the country. There had to be forty five people in
Speaker 2: the room, and I told him how you shut this
Speaker 2: at least eighty percent of cocaine down? And when I
Speaker 2: got done, they all agreed that it would work what
Speaker 2: I told him. But like I was conducting an orchestra,
Speaker 2: four guys in different corners of the room stood up
Speaker 2: and they said, yeah, but what would we do for jobs?
Speaker 2: They didn't care about shutting it down. That was the mentality.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to stop it.
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