Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on Deep Cover. It was the spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. Ned Timmins had been working undercover with
Speaker 1: bikers in the Detroit area for roughly three years. He
Speaker 1: thought he was close to finding something big to infiltrating
Speaker 1: a smuggling ring. Supposedly it was importing huge amounts of marijuana,
Speaker 1: and now he had a lead on someone who might
Speaker 1: be directly involved, a part time car salesman who went
Speaker 1: by the nickname Shine. We're looking at what he has,
Speaker 1: a house and cars and everything, and no source of income.
Speaker 1: And then we're pulling phone records, bank records and everything,
Speaker 1: and huge deposits of fifty sixty thousand at a time.
Speaker 1: Ned thought he might have enough to try and flip Shine.
Speaker 1: The FBI knows a lot, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: is a game to try to ferret out the information
Speaker 1: you need. When you throw down the FBI badge and credentials,
Speaker 1: it horrifies guilty people. What Ned needed was an inn
Speaker 1: an introduction, and as Ned recalls it, another one of
Speaker 1: his biker informants came up with the solution. They would
Speaker 1: all get together and have a chili cookoff see who
Speaker 1: could cook the meanest bowl of chili concarnate, because apparently
Speaker 1: Shine love to cook, so this would be a sort
Speaker 1: of informal iron chef competition. Ned says, this other biker,
Speaker 1: his informant, set the whole thing up. Basically, he tells Shine,
Speaker 1: and I was at this guy's house and he makes
Speaker 1: the most incredible chili and it's better than nearest Shine. Well, Shines,
Speaker 1: like bull fucking shit is better than mine. We'll have
Speaker 1: a cookoff. This is also exactly how it all goes
Speaker 1: down in the novel Shine and taking the chili challenge seriously.
Speaker 1: Ned could smell the rich PEPPERI aromas from out in
Speaker 1: a neatly trimmed front yard. Every man has something he's
Speaker 1: proud of. The deck he built, the way he cooks
Speaker 1: a steak, how well tuned his carburetors are for Shine,
Speaker 1: it was his chili. In the novel, Ned describes Shine
Speaker 1: as a jackal, a guy with bright, intelligent eyes and
Speaker 1: a body that looked ready to bite fast and hard.
Speaker 1: Ned knocks on the door of Shine's house. So we
Speaker 1: get in there and bullshit around, and I see that
Speaker 1: there in the kitchen is a regular sized shotgun. Shotgun
Speaker 1: above the door. Air fifteen in one corner, guns all
Speaker 1: over the place. At this point, Ned says he's still
Speaker 1: very much in character, just playing the role of Ed Thomas,
Speaker 1: the badass biker who just stopped by to cook some
Speaker 1: chili and down some bruskies. He's just waiting for the
Speaker 1: right moment when everyone is relaxed, guards down. We go
Speaker 1: about an hour and we're sitting in a kitchen and
Speaker 1: I said, well, it's time to make a move. I
Speaker 1: just took my credits out of my pocket and laid
Speaker 1: him on the table and said, Shine, I'm an FBI agent.
Speaker 1: I'm going to send you away for life. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take this motherfucking house. I'm gonna take your cars. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take any money you got in the bank. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna have a fucking penny, and you play ball
Speaker 1: with me or all this has gone, all of it.
Speaker 1: Ned says that it took Shine time to come around,
Speaker 1: but eventually, after many hours of hemmying and hauing, he
Speaker 1: agreed to cooperate to switch sides and start working for
Speaker 1: the FBI. But not necessarily because Ned won him over
Speaker 1: with his tough talk or his badge. Shine I found
Speaker 1: out had his own agenda, and that agenda had everything
Speaker 1: to do with one crucial detail. It was obvious if
Speaker 1: he just looked at the guy. He'd been shot in
Speaker 1: the right thigh and took a probably eight inch circular
Speaker 1: chunk of meat out of his leg and some of
Speaker 1: the bone, and so was shorter. He had to wear
Speaker 1: a shoe with a big lift, and so he limped
Speaker 1: quite a bit. So yeah, the jackal the wild predatory dog.
Speaker 1: In real life, he was partially disabled because it turns
Speaker 1: out someone had almost killed him. And when Ned showed up,
Speaker 1: Shine was looking for an escape. I'm Jake Albern and
Speaker 1: this is Deep Cover, episode three, El Dorado. Shine was
Speaker 1: hurt badly in the shooting. He was in a coma intubated,
Speaker 1: just lying there. Shine's son Adam, who was fifteen at
Speaker 1: the time, still remembers at all. Every day after school
Speaker 1: was kind of a death watch because he was in
Speaker 1: an ostra for a long time. Mom, pick us up
Speaker 1: from school, just it became routine, going your homework, sit
Speaker 1: there for a couple hours, home, how was your day?
Speaker 1: And that went on for a long time. His father
Speaker 1: eventually came too, but he was in the hospital for
Speaker 1: three months before he finally was ready to go home, well,
Speaker 1: not home exactly. As Shine gets ready to leave the hospital,
Speaker 1: he decides they can't go back to melvin Dale, the
Speaker 1: working class factory town where they lived, and as Adam
Speaker 1: remembers it, Dad had come up with a bold new plan.
Speaker 1: We were better off getting out of there. That was
Speaker 1: the way it was presented to us kids, like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's you know. We know you're leaving all your friends
Speaker 1: that you've known forever, but we need to get out
Speaker 1: of here. So they decided to relocate. They found a
Speaker 1: place where the family could lay low escape the trouble
Speaker 1: that was brewing in Detroit. They moved to Clarkston, a
Speaker 1: rural hamlet surrounded by lakes, about forty miles north of Detroit.
Speaker 1: It would be great if we could ask Shine how
Speaker 1: he remembers all of this going down, But remember he's deceased.
Speaker 1: He got cancer in the nineties and passed away, so
Speaker 1: we can't ask him. But we did get our hands
Speaker 1: on about six hundred pages of court testimony, all Shine
Speaker 1: under oath, telling his side of the story, and the
Speaker 1: story that emerges, well, it's not entirely consistent with Ned's
Speaker 1: version of events. Shine says he was actually looking for Ned,
Speaker 1: that he had heard about an agent he could trust
Speaker 1: from Toby Anderson, the violent country western singer. Remember that
Speaker 1: Shine's older brother, and he vouches for Ned. In his testimony,
Speaker 1: Shine says he was looking for Ned because he was scared,
Speaker 1: scared of his bosses. He suspected it was one of
Speaker 1: them who had him shot. Shine says in the court records,
Speaker 1: it seemed to me like the group was out of control.
Speaker 1: They were smuggling cocaine more and more frequently, and I
Speaker 1: was afraid I was going to get shot again. That's
Speaker 1: the reason I went to Ned Timmins, not because of
Speaker 1: fear of going to jail. Slowly, Shine started to tell
Speaker 1: Ned about the group, as he called it, the smugglers,
Speaker 1: and said it was a large operation involving countless people
Speaker 1: across many states, and he was in charge of security.
Speaker 1: His job was to use that mysterious briefcase with the
Speaker 1: voice stress analyzer, his portable lie detector to vet every
Speaker 1: single would be employee. If this were true, Shine was
Speaker 1: the lynch pin, the one guy who knew everyone. There
Speaker 1: was just one problem. Shine hated being an informant. He
Speaker 1: didn't films good about it. You know it was it
Speaker 1: wasn't type of person that he was, but knew it
Speaker 1: was what he had to do to stay alize the
Speaker 1: Styckliss family. I was aware of the stress he was
Speaker 1: going through. I was aware of how much it hurt him.
Speaker 1: These were his friends. These are the guys that he
Speaker 1: went to Texas and fish Bass with. These are the
Speaker 1: guys he traveled with, and you know, they were like
Speaker 1: a team. He's trading them in and he's getting you. Yes,
Speaker 1: here his new best friend. That's what you had to do.
Speaker 1: You had to get whatever information you could out of him.
Speaker 1: And during this time with Shine, do you think that
Speaker 1: he considers you his friend? Yeah? I think so. On
Speaker 1: one hand, he was a total, crazy, drunken drug addict
Speaker 1: wild man. On the other hand, he always wanted to
Speaker 1: protect his family. Something happens to me, You got to
Speaker 1: take care of my family. And did you take that seriously? Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Ned was most curious about
Speaker 1: was a rumor that somewhere in Detroit there was a
Speaker 1: massive warehouse that smugglers were using to distribute their drugs.
Speaker 1: The place sounded mythic, the El Dorado of stash houses,
Speaker 1: and Shine basically tells Ned, Yep, that warehouse, it's ours. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Shine discussed the warehouse with me and he said, here,
Speaker 1: I'll show you in. We went and identified it. Shine
Speaker 1: was quickly proving his worth. He knew all about this
Speaker 1: warehouse because the guy who ran it was his boss.
Speaker 1: You Shine tells me about this guy, Mike Vogel. You know.
Speaker 1: Shines said that Vogel was controlling most of the weed
Speaker 1: going into university in Michigan. Now Nen had a direct
Speaker 1: lead on him, and he put him under surveillance. After
Speaker 1: the break, I tracked down Mike Vogel, the mastermind behind
Speaker 1: Detroit's legendary drug warehouse. Think about how would you feel
Speaker 1: if you could buy anything he wanted to? There are
Speaker 1: no rules for the wealthy, and none just all gets stupid.
Speaker 1: I meet Mike Vogel at a house in a quaint
Speaker 1: town outside of Detroit. Mike greets me at the door.
Speaker 1: He's an older guy and moves slowly, almost seems like
Speaker 1: he has a limp, but not meek, not at all,
Speaker 1: more like an old bear. Not as fast as he
Speaker 1: used to be, but hey, don't mess with him. Grabs
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee, lights a cigarette and just starts talking,
Speaker 1: but before we get into his life as a criminal mastermind,
Speaker 1: he tells me that I have to understand where he
Speaker 1: started out, not with marijuana, but with groceries. You gotta remember,
Speaker 1: way before all this, I work for my father, Okay,
Speaker 1: And I ran the frozen food and receiving docs for
Speaker 1: his company. Okay, And that's when I learned about wholesale distribution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: prior to being a big time drug distributor, he was
Speaker 1: moving large quantities of frozen peas. And my father's warehouse
Speaker 1: was like two and a half city blocks long, full
Speaker 1: of drags, full of can goods, and a freezer that
Speaker 1: was fifty thousand square feet. He was a grocery guy.
Speaker 1: That's how he became an expert in inventory, specifically his
Speaker 1: father's tracking system. They used paper receipts with carving copies,
Speaker 1: you know, almost like what you'd get at the dry cleaners.
Speaker 1: Mike grows up in the grocery business, one of ten kids,
Speaker 1: goes to Catholic school. He says he was a reasonably
Speaker 1: good student in college. Mike likes to party and hang
Speaker 1: out with girls, smoke some pot. At heart, though he's
Speaker 1: a business guy, he doesn't want to get caught, and
Speaker 1: he wants to protect himself by learning more about who
Speaker 1: might be up against, so he decides to do some homework.
Speaker 1: He starts volunteering for the police. My job was to
Speaker 1: watch to parking lots, quote unquote. I want to know
Speaker 1: the codes. I wanted to see how they were, how
Speaker 1: they acted. And police are not They're not as smart
Speaker 1: as everybody thinks. You know, They're just doing their job.
Speaker 1: This whole experience only builds Mike's confidence, makes him think
Speaker 1: he can up his game start dealing on a larger scale.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon, he's buying five hundred pounds of marijuana down
Speaker 1: to Florida, loading it into the trunk of his Pontiac Bonneville,
Speaker 1: and driving it up to Michigan, where he sells it
Speaker 1: to smaller dealers. I knew him from high school, all
Speaker 1: Catholic Central buddies, and he just keeps on expanding. I
Speaker 1: knew how to build. You have to have the product
Speaker 1: before you can do it. So what you have to
Speaker 1: do is have a constant supply. And that's what I had.
Speaker 1: There was a constant supply. Like any smart businessman, he
Speaker 1: had multiple suppliers. Eventually big suppliers. Some would bring the
Speaker 1: marijuana in by plane to a small airport in northern
Speaker 1: Michigan or a grass strip down in Kentucky. Others brought
Speaker 1: it in by boat to secret landing sites down south
Speaker 1: and then brought it up north by truck. Then Mike
Speaker 1: Loogal needed somewhere to put it. He would store the
Speaker 1: product in the big warehouse out an eight mile Mike
Speaker 1: the grocery guy. He understood that when it came to
Speaker 1: selling produce, whether it was marijuana or you know, Brussels sprouts,
Speaker 1: the key to profits was moving large quantities quickly and efficiently. Last,
Speaker 1: but not least, he developed a network of trusted buyers
Speaker 1: who each had their own territory, for instance, college campuses
Speaker 1: like University of Michigan, and almost like a big retail chain.
Speaker 1: He used his muscle to push out competitors. I had
Speaker 1: it in such a way that I really control the
Speaker 1: marijuana industry in Michigan and Iver and all the rest.
Speaker 1: I'd hear of someone else bring in a loud, I'd
Speaker 1: just bring in stuff and reduced my prices so they could.
Speaker 1: One guy I heard he was selling his stuff for
Speaker 1: three tan. I start saw mine at two eighty five,
Speaker 1: and I always had good product. All of this sounds
Speaker 1: like stuff out of a classic business school textbook. Right
Speaker 1: sell large quantities, so even slim profit margins can pay off.
Speaker 1: Keep your inventory moving. If competitors emerge, undersell them. Even
Speaker 1: if you lose some money, it's worth it to maintain
Speaker 1: control of the market. I mean, this guy could be
Speaker 1: your classic Midwestern CEO, which he kind of was. But
Speaker 1: all of this has to be done in complete secrecy.
Speaker 1: For example, most buyers didn't even know where his big
Speaker 1: warehouse was. When they came to make a pickup, he'd
Speaker 1: have them go to a rendezvous point like some truck stop.
Speaker 1: Then one of Mike's trusted drivers would take the buyer's
Speaker 1: vehicle to the warehouse, loaded up with pot, and then
Speaker 1: head back to the truck stop for the handoff. They
Speaker 1: didn't have to know or my location when nobody needed
Speaker 1: to know that unless you're a fucking thief and you're
Speaker 1: going to try to steal it, which would have been
Speaker 1: a tragedy on a lot of different levels. You can't
Speaker 1: allow anybody to steal from you. Mike's business it was
Speaker 1: going very well. His nephew, Matt Vogel, a teenager at
Speaker 1: the time, remembers how he loved going to visit uncle Mike.
Speaker 1: I bought a Francloyd Wright style house in Milford twenty
Speaker 1: five acres thirty acres, But it wasn't just the classy
Speaker 1: architecture that intrigued young Matt. One time, in one of
Speaker 1: the back bedrooms, I remember opening the door. There was
Speaker 1: so much money in there. It was just stacked in
Speaker 1: boxes and twenties and hundreds, so you could smell it.
Speaker 1: Money has a very distinct odor, and there was just
Speaker 1: so much of it you could you could smell it
Speaker 1: to a complete an adrenaline rush. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: that much money and you know it's just sitting there
Speaker 1: and you could literally take it, and it'd be a
Speaker 1: long time before somebody figured it out. Matt says that
Speaker 1: hanging out with his uncle was always an adventure. You
Speaker 1: never knew where he might take you. So I get
Speaker 1: a call, We're gonna go to the Super Bowl. We're
Speaker 1: thinking this was great, so my mom dropped me off
Speaker 1: at the Pontiac Airport. In fact, they saw George Bush Senior,
Speaker 1: who was vice president at the time, landed Pontiac Airport
Speaker 1: and hop into his motor cap, causing an epic traffic jam.
Speaker 1: But Mike, he wasn't gonna wait any traffic or deal
Speaker 1: with parking. And I'm thinking, let's to deal. Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a helicopter. That's what you do. But that
Speaker 1: was that lifestyle that they didn't care. I mean, who
Speaker 1: flies to the super Bowl because you don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with parking. Once they were at the game, Uncle
Speaker 1: Mike he seemed to love having little Matt around. Go hey, Mike,
Speaker 1: We're like, oh, give me a drinking Okay, give me
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars bell. I'd literally go up to the
Speaker 1: bar at sixteen and a silver down. There's always movie
Speaker 1: stars walking around. It's the super Bowl. Buy him and
Speaker 1: drink hour or whatever it costs. He never asked for
Speaker 1: the change. I must have went home with two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in my pocket. Of course, two grand was nothing
Speaker 1: to Uncle Mike. Nothing. Think about it. How would why
Speaker 1: would you feel if you could buy anything you wanted to.
Speaker 1: You could go buy a leer, jed, or you could
Speaker 1: buy this or buy that, buy an island if you want.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a great feeling. There are no rules
Speaker 1: for the wealthy, and none. Just don't get stupid. This
Speaker 1: is the guy the FBI and the US Attorney General
Speaker 1: had conjectured about a marijuana tycoon, a man with closets
Speaker 1: that literally looked like Scrooge McDuck's volt. But here's the
Speaker 1: funny thing about Mike Vogel. Right for him, the money
Speaker 1: came so fast and easy that eventually, he says, he
Speaker 1: kind of grew tired of it. Jake, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you something. It was stressful, tough business to run on
Speaker 1: my end because I basically was involved the smuggling, in
Speaker 1: the distribution of it, and then having to get the
Speaker 1: money back out. I mean, it took a lot from me.
Speaker 1: I was I was sick of this fucking And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just exhaustion. It was the paranoia too. He wondered
Speaker 1: who might be stealing from him, who would rat on him,
Speaker 1: because it would just take one one person for everything
Speaker 1: to crumble. It was right around this time that Mike
Speaker 1: got a call from his partner, the guy who actually
Speaker 1: smuggled the dope into the US. He had very good news.
Speaker 1: The next shipment, code named Bulldog, would be ten times
Speaker 1: the usual amount, three hundred thousand pounds of marijuana. Mike Vogel.
Speaker 1: He freaked out. I don't know, hell do you bring
Speaker 1: out three hundre thousand pounds expect? How to distribute it,
Speaker 1: how to get the money. It was just too much.
Speaker 1: To compound his fears, Mike got a tip from a
Speaker 1: trusted friend, another smuggler, a guy who knew things, and
Speaker 1: this guy tells him the Bulldog shipment has been compromised.
Speaker 1: The FEDS know about it. This suggested there was a rat.
Speaker 1: I became really distrustful of Shine, Okay, really distrustful. Shine
Speaker 1: and Mike Vogel had been working together for a while.
Speaker 1: At this point, Shine betted everyone with his light detector machine,
Speaker 1: so if there was a rat, he had somehow slipped
Speaker 1: patch Shine, unless, of course, the rat was Shine. You know,
Speaker 1: once you've been in that business and you're always worried
Speaker 1: about what's going on around you. I'm not a dumb person,
Speaker 1: and he just didn't fit. This bout of paranoia occurred
Speaker 1: around the same time as Bulldog, well over a year
Speaker 1: before Shine actually flips, So at the time, Shine was
Speaker 1: not an informant and he basically tells his boss, look,
Speaker 1: there's no way our smuggling ring has been compromised. Shine
Speaker 1: remembered this conversation and actually recounted it at trial. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read you a bit from the court
Speaker 1: trans Shine. I told him there was no way in
Speaker 1: the world there could have been any type of infiltration.
Speaker 1: I had tested everybody. And Michael said, you're either a
Speaker 1: cop or they paid you off. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm neither. I told him they could test me. Prosecutor,
Speaker 1: did he shine, Yes? Prosecutor did anyone interpret that test? Shine? Well,
Speaker 1: he interpreted. I had to chart it for him, but
Speaker 1: it did take place. Prosecutor, did you pass Shine, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm here. They told me. If I flunked, I was dead.
Speaker 1: But it didn't matter. Mike Vogo couldn't shake off his suspicions,
Speaker 1: and so he bailed on the operation. He walked away
Speaker 1: from the three hundred thousand pound load what was arguably
Speaker 1: one of the largest loads of marijuana in US history.
Speaker 1: In the months to come, Mike Vogo continued to nurse
Speaker 1: his suspicions about Shine. It was like, once this idea
Speaker 1: had wormed its way into his mind, he just couldn't
Speaker 1: let it go. And then one day towards the end
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty three, a member of Mike's outfit blasts
Speaker 1: Shine with a shotgun at close range, almost kills him.
Speaker 1: This is how Shine ends up in the hospital in
Speaker 1: a coma with his son sitting by his side, and
Speaker 1: this is why Shine walks with a limp for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. In reporting this out, I've heard
Speaker 1: so many different versions of why Shine shot. No one
Speaker 1: can agree. Some claim was just a stupid quarrel that
Speaker 1: got out of hand. For his part, Mike Vogel denies
Speaker 1: that he had anything to do with this, though he
Speaker 1: did speak with the shooter and told him, well, the
Speaker 1: problem with you is you're a bad fucking shot. Oh
Speaker 1: she had killed the son of a bitch. You can
Speaker 1: still hear a bit of rage in his voice all
Speaker 1: these years later. It just kind of flares up. And
Speaker 1: Shine talks about my temper too. Says that sometimes Mike
Speaker 1: seemed to become unhinged, that he was acting irrationally. He
Speaker 1: said that Mike was quote turning into a Doctor Jekyll
Speaker 1: and mister Hyde character. There's still a little Jacqueline hide
Speaker 1: in him. I caught a glimpse of this myself when
Speaker 1: I visited Mike Vogel at his house. He was for
Speaker 1: the most part, very cordial and welcoming consummate Doctor Jekyl.
Speaker 1: And then one afternoon showed up with Matt Vogel, his nephew,
Speaker 1: and I got kind of weird. Mike seemed to think
Speaker 1: that me and Matt, his own nephew, were conspiring against
Speaker 1: him somehow when we first arrived. Don't fuck with me seriously.
Speaker 1: It's like, as I said, when you guys walked in
Speaker 1: and you said that you guys have gotten together, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the other night. I said, you
Speaker 1: know what, in the olden days, I would have just
Speaker 1: called Ale and another couple of bikers and explain to
Speaker 1: you what happens if you keep on going the way
Speaker 1: you're going. That's kind of disturbing. Why it would only
Speaker 1: be disturbing if you were in the trunk of a
Speaker 1: car and you're going to some other place field and
Speaker 1: you get out and they beat the fuck out of
Speaker 1: here and leave you there. Matt and I just kind
Speaker 1: of looked at each other. Was Uncle Mike serious here?
Speaker 1: I mean, didn't seem like he was joking. And then
Speaker 1: just like that, Mike was back to being Doctor Jekyll, friendly, thoughtful, intelligent.
Speaker 1: Mike may have been an intimidating figure. But Shine, it
Speaker 1: turns out, had taken measures to protect himself. He had
Speaker 1: dirt on his boss, incriminating evidence, rental car receides, hotel records,
Speaker 1: and other evidence. He even bugged a hotel room in
Speaker 1: Tampa and surreptitiously made recordings of Mike Vogel talking. Later
Speaker 1: on at trial, Shine discussed this here he is in
Speaker 1: the transcripts talking about all the evidence he had. Shine,
Speaker 1: I refer to them as my ace and the whole
Speaker 1: you know, in case Vogel made any more threats on
Speaker 1: my life, and I told him I had documentation to
Speaker 1: back up my credibility. I could corroborate certain times and
Speaker 1: dates of smuggling. Prosecutor, you threatened Vogel that you had documentation, Shine, Yes.
Speaker 1: In the end, Mike Vogel's paranoia it may have been justified.
Speaker 1: Either that or it became a self fulfilling prophecy, like
Speaker 1: he was so worried that Shine was an informant, so
Speaker 1: certain that this was true, that he accused him of
Speaker 1: being a rat, made him take his own my detector test,
Speaker 1: even wished him dead in front of others, And all
Speaker 1: of this seemed to spook Shine so badly it sent
Speaker 1: him right into the open arms of the FBI. Coming up.
Speaker 1: Ned discovers the Shine. He has far more secrets to tell,
Speaker 1: secrets that will lead them both on a bit of
Speaker 1: a wild goose chase very far from Detroit. Ned and
Speaker 1: the FBI. They didn't go after Vogel right away. As
Speaker 1: big as Vogel was, as impressive as he was, he
Speaker 1: was just the distributor. And if you really wanted to
Speaker 1: understand how drugs were coming into the country and try
Speaker 1: to shut it down, then he didn't just go after
Speaker 1: the distributor. He wanted the smugglers, the supply chain, the financiers,
Speaker 1: the whole magilla. The FBI prides itself and working the
Speaker 1: entire case, however long it takes to get everybody, not
Speaker 1: just to grab a kilo or a bail or you know,
Speaker 1: seize a couple of cars or something. Their game plan
Speaker 1: is to get the whole organization. Plus, if Ned arrest
Speaker 1: had Vogel, then that would tip off the other players
Speaker 1: in the organization. Ned he was still an undercover investigation mode.
Speaker 1: He had just begun to tap into what Shine knew. Remember,
Speaker 1: Shine was the guy who used his lie detector machine
Speaker 1: to vet everyone. I mean, basically he was the one
Speaker 1: man HR department of a national drug ring. But getting
Speaker 1: Shine to divulge all that information, well that was not
Speaker 1: so easy. You'd ask him question and he'd be forthright
Speaker 1: on it. But again you couldn't you know, you knew
Speaker 1: you only had so long with him, and he would
Speaker 1: just like overheat. Ned says he'd do whatever he could
Speaker 1: to get inside of Shine's head. For example, he'd take
Speaker 1: him fishing so Sein would relax. They'd have a few beers,
Speaker 1: and sometimes Ned says he'd even try to speak with
Speaker 1: a Texas drawl when they chatted, because Shine apparently had
Speaker 1: a soft spot for Texans. You know, I just say,
Speaker 1: I can't come on, Shine, you know, let's have another beer.
Speaker 1: I think my bass was two inches bigger than yours,
Speaker 1: and and he would he would get pissed. He's, no,
Speaker 1: let me let measure that. Get the get the measuring
Speaker 1: thing out. You know, we gotta measure that fish. I
Speaker 1: think my fish was bigger from the outside. At least
Speaker 1: Ned and Shine they seem like they were really tight.
Speaker 1: Ned's partner at the office, Linnis, then a Lavicius. He
Speaker 1: picked up on this he and Ned were probably fairly
Speaker 1: identical to each other, had the same qualities and same
Speaker 1: gift of gab. That's why probably Ned was able to
Speaker 1: convince him to flip. The difference between one and the
Speaker 1: other is ones involved in the legal activity and the
Speaker 1: other ones involved in law enforcement activity. But the personalities
Speaker 1: almost match identical. But Ned says he was just acting
Speaker 1: that it was all fake. In other words, he was
Speaker 1: just doing his job and doing it well, trying to
Speaker 1: get as close to this guy as he could building.
Speaker 1: I guess you'd call it intimacy, or maybe it was
Speaker 1: more like emotional manipulation. In any case, Ned says that
Speaker 1: the effort of doing this day in and day out,
Speaker 1: it started to wear on him. I think it's almost
Speaker 1: a form of PTSD. You're so psychologically involved with these people,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, you're solving problems for their family,
Speaker 1: for their kids, for their relatives or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: they bring every problem to you and you have to
Speaker 1: solve it within the rules of the FBI. These two guys,
Speaker 1: they needed each other. Ned needed Shine to make his case,
Speaker 1: and Shine, oh, you know, he needed Ned to help
Speaker 1: him and his fa Emily find a way out and
Speaker 1: escape in a way. It was your classic symbiotic relationship,
Speaker 1: but honestly, I think it was more than this. Shine
Speaker 1: and Ned shared something. There was a strange symmetry to
Speaker 1: their lives. Ned was that dude living near the country
Speaker 1: club who'd grown a Fu Manchu mustache, learned to ride
Speaker 1: a Harley, and was passing as a biker with access
Speaker 1: to meth. Shine was a clever criminal from the working
Speaker 1: class streets of Melvyndale who was now laying low in
Speaker 1: the suburbs, passing as just another guy with a dad bod.
Speaker 1: They were both essentially undercover agents, but not identical. They
Speaker 1: were mirror images of one another. And then one day
Speaker 1: Shine really starts to talk. We got our hands on
Speaker 1: an FBI report. They cataloged everything he told Ned. In
Speaker 1: one session they had together, Shine charts out the whole network,
Speaker 1: giving Ned an organized chart of the whole company. He
Speaker 1: tells them locations Sheridan Hotels in Tampa, Florida, a house
Speaker 1: and slide down Louisiana, places in Ohio, Kentucky, Boston, Detroit,
Speaker 1: and he confirms the size of some of their loads
Speaker 1: twenty seven thousand pounds, thirty five thousand pounds, three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, and then he had names for Ned. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: those involved included an American diplomat, a Texas billionaire, a
Speaker 1: Teamster executive. The list went on and on. Shine knew
Speaker 1: everyone from the ship captains to the guy working the
Speaker 1: radios to the offloaders. Shine basically tells Ned, if you
Speaker 1: can stop this organization, you're going to stop most of
Speaker 1: the marijuana coming into the United States. I was excited.
Speaker 1: I know it was a massive operation, and I knew
Speaker 1: that we had the key to the safety deposit box
Speaker 1: to open it all up. Shine also tells Ned in
Speaker 1: so many words, I know how the smugglers did it.
Speaker 1: I know what boats they used. I know where the
Speaker 1: secret offload sites were. I know how it all works
Speaker 1: because I was there on the ground when some of
Speaker 1: these ships came in. I know the whole system. So
Speaker 1: Ned and Shine they started taking some trips together, and
Speaker 1: they go deep into the swamps of North Carolina to
Speaker 1: the marshy inlets that pirates once used. Next time a
Speaker 1: deep cover he called me up just to shoot the bull.
Speaker 1: He said, Bob, place some of us boards because unleds pop.
Speaker 1: I says, oh yeah, he was dressed for a disco
Speaker 1: flat pants. He had a shirt that was silk and
Speaker 1: it was open to his Sternham. He had gold chains.
Speaker 1: All these items you don't wear on an open boat
Speaker 1: and Carter at County. Deep Cover is produced by Jacob
Speaker 1: Smith and edited by Karen Shakergie. Our story editor is
Speaker 1: Jack hit. Original music and our theme was composed by
Speaker 1: Luis Gara and Flawn Williams is our engineer. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Amy Gaines. Mia Lobell is Pushkin's executive producer. Ned's
Speaker 1: novel is read by Walton Goggins. Special thanks to Julia
Speaker 1: Barton had their Fame, Carly mcgliori, Leeta Mullatt, Maya Caning,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Aggie Taylor, Kadija Holland, Zoe Gwenn and Jacob
Speaker 1: Weisberg at Pushkin Industries. Special thanks also to Jeff Singer
Speaker 1: at Stowaway Entertainment. I'm Jake Calpern