Carlos Lehder

Carlos Lehder
Profile picture
Born	Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas September 7, 1949 (age 63) Armenia, Colombia
Nationality	Colombian
Occupation	co-founder of the Medellín Cartel
Criminal status	Incarcerated
Criminal charge	Drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping

Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas or simply Carlos Lehder (born September 7, 1949) is a German-Colombian drug dealer currently imprisoned in the United States, having been co-founder of the Medellín Cartel. Born in Armenia, Colombia, Lehder eventually ran a cocaine transport empire on Norman's Cay island, 210 miles (340 km) off the Florida coast in the central Bahamas. Lehder was allegedly also active in the Quintín Lamé Movement, an indigenous guerrilla organization tied to the Colombian 19th of April Movement and FARC insurgencies.

Lehder was also a founding member of Muerte a Secuestradores, a paramilitary group whose focus was to retaliate against the kidnappings of cartel members and their families. He was one of the most important operators therein, and is considered to be one of the most important Colombian drug kingpins to be successfully prosecuted in the United States. In the 2001 movie Blow, the character Diego Delgado was based on him. Lehder is of mixed German-Colombian descent, his father a German engineer and mother a Colombian schoolteacher. The family owned a semi-legitimate used car business in the Medellin area in which Carlos got his start as a criminal by supplying it with stolen American cars.

Early activities and prison

Carlos Lehder (left) insufflating cocaine with former prison mate Steven Yakovac on Norman's Cay (1976).

Lehder started out as a stolen car dealer, a marijuana dealer, and a smuggler of stolen cars between the US and Canada. While serving a sentence for car theft in federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, Lehder decided that, upon his release, he would take advantage of the burgeoning market for cocaine in the United States and enlisted his bunkmate, former marijuana dealer George Jung, as a future partner. Jung had experience with flying marijuana to the US from Mexico in small aircraft, staying below radar level and landing on dry lake beds. Inspired by the idea, Lehder decided to apply the principle to cocaine transport and formed a partnership with Jung. While in prison, he set out to learn as much information as possible that could be useful to him in the cocaine business. Lehder would sometimes even spend hours questioning fellow inmates on money laundering and smuggling. George Jung allegedly said that Lehder kept countless files and constantly took notes.

Lehder's ultimate scheme was to revolutionize the cocaine trade by transporting the drug to the United States using small aircraft. Previously, drug dealers had to rely on human "mules" to smuggle the drug in suitcases on regular commercial flights. In Lehder's vision, much greater quantities could be transported directly by small private aircraft, with far less risk of interception.

Starting his empire

After their releases (both were paroled), Lehder and Jung built up a small stream of money through simple, traditional drug smuggling - they enlisted two American girls to take a paid vacation to Antigua, receive cocaine, and carry it back with them to the US in their suitcases. Repeating this process several times, they soon had enough money for an airplane.

Using a small plane and a professional pilot, which were stolen not paid for, they began to fly cocaine into the United States via the Bahamas, increasing their financial resources and building connections and trust with Colombian suppliers while spreading money around among Bahamian government officials for political and judicial protection. Their unconventional method of drug-smuggling began to gain credibility.

Norman's Cay

In the late 1970s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania, and Lehder's secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as a complete all-purpose headquarters for his operations.

That island was Norman's Cay, which at that point consisted of a marina, a yacht club, approximately 100 private homes, and an air strip. In 1978, Lehder began buying up property and harassing and threatening the island's residents. At one point, a yacht was found drifting off the coast with the corpse of one of its owners aboard. He is estimated to have spent $4.5 million on the island in total.

As Lehder chased away the local population and began to assume total control of the island, Norman's Cay became Lehder's lawless private fiefdom. By this time, George Jung had been forced out of the operation, and international criminal financier Robert Vesco had allegedly become a partner. Jung used his prior connections to take up a more modest line of independent smuggling for Escobar, and stayed out of Lehder's way.

From 1978 through 1982, the Cay was the Caribbean's main drug smuggling hub and a tropical hideaway and playground for Lehder and associates. Cocaine was flown in from Colombia by jet and then reloaded into the small aircraft that then distributed it to locations in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. Lehder was believed to receive 1 kilo on every 4 that was transported through Norman's Cay.

Lehder built a 3,300-foot (1,000 m) runway protected by radar, bodyguards and Doberman attack dogs for the fleet of aircraft under his command. In the glory days of his operation, 300 kilograms of cocaine would arrive on the island every day, and Lehder's personal wealth mounted into the billions. Indeed, he made so much wealth that on two occasions he offered to pay the Colombian External debt. In 1978 he made an offer to do so to President Alfonso López Michelsen, in exchange for a free space for drug trafficking and in 1982 through Pablo Escobar, by then a Congressman, he did so again, this time in an attempt to prevent his extradition.

Downfall

The approval of the extradition of Colombian encourages Escobar and Lehder to participate in politics. Lehder founded the National Latino Movement (Movimiento Latino Nacional in Spanish), with which is popularized from speeches against extradition and which manages three congressional seats.

The April 30, 1984 assassination of Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the Colombian Minister of Justice, initiated the beginning of the end for Lehder and the Medellín cartel. Lara had campaigned against the activities of the cartel, and his murder marked a change in Colombian politics. President Belisario Betancur, who had previously opposed extraditing any Colombian drug lords to the United States, announced that he was now willing to extradite. Carlos Lehder was the top name on the crackdown list.

Other major Medellín cartel associates fled to the protection of Manuel Noriega in Panama, but when Pablo Escobar discovered that Noriega was plotting to betray him to the U.S. in return for amnesty, they fled to Nicaragua to seek the assistance of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. Escobar had paid some of Noriega's closest colonels to inform him of Noriega's intentions. The downfall of Carlos Lehder was assisted by his blatant bribing of Bahamian officials and the attention the activities on the island were attracting.

Fugitive, capture, trial and whereabouts

In 1982, after CBS report by Brian Ross on U.S. television made public the corruption of Bahamian government leaders, Lehder could not return to Norman's Cay. The government had frozen all his bank accounts and taken over his property and possessions. He went from a billionaire to being nearly bankrupt. While he was on the run in the jungle, he got sick with a fever. Pablo Escobar sent a helicopter for him and brought him back to Medellín where he received medical attention to save his life. Even so, he was left very weak. When he recovered, Pablo gave him work to do. He was hired as a trusted bodyguard, although he was given the respect he had earned. Eventually, Lehder wanted to rebuild his fortune, but he was captured at a farm he had just established in Colombia when a new employee of his informed the police of his location. In 1987, he was extradited to the United States, where he was tried and sentenced to life without parole, plus an additional 135 years. Now all of the other cartel leaders knew what would happen if they were extradited, and soon after, the Medellín cartel organizations split up, and a violent war began as the cartel leaders tried to protect themselves by fighting back. These smaller organizations, especially Pablo's, were later attacked by the Cali cartel, by the Colombian police/army, and soon the U.S. became involved as well.

In 1992, in exchange for Lehder's agreement to testify against Manuel Noriega, this was reduced to a total sentence of 55 years. Three years after that, Lehder wrote a letter of complaint to a Jacksonville federal district judge, complaining that the government had reneged on a deal to transfer him to a German prison. The letter was construed as a threat against the judge.

Within weeks of sending that letter in the fall of 1995, Lehder was whisked away into the night, according to several protected witnesses at the Mesa Unit in Arizona. While many believe he could have been released, others consider that this is not true. There was a brother of Carlos Lehder, Federico Guillermo Lehder Rivas, on the periphery of the business who might have been mistaken for Carlos, causing the reports of his being free and overseas.

According to journalist and author Tamara S. Inscoe-Johnson, who worked on the Lehder defense during the time in question, Lehder was simply transferred to another prison and has continued to be held in WITSEC, which is the Bureau of Prisons' version of the federal Witness Protection Program.

Inscoe-Johnson argued that Lehder had not been released, despite Internet rumors to the contrary. Inscoe-Johnson's work on Lehder entitled Norman's Cay: The True Story of Carlos Lehder and the Medellin Cartel, details why the author believes that Lehder will never be released. Allegedly, Lehder would be privy to secret information regarding the CIA's and his own involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.

Carlos Lehder's ongoing legal battles confirm Lehder remains imprisoned in the US, and that he is not likely to be released anytime soon. On July 22, 2005 he appeared in the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to contest his sentence. Lehder appeared pro se, arguing that the United States failed to perform its obligations under a cooperation agreement he had entered into with the United States Attorney's Office, after he held up his end of the deal. (United States v. Lehder-Rivas, 136 Fed. Appx. 324; 2005). In May 2007, he requested the Colombian Supreme Court to order the Colombian government to request from the United States his release because of the violations of his cooperation agreement. In May 2008, Carlos Lehder's lawyer declared to El Tiempo that an Habeas corpus petition had been filed, alleging that there were violations to his cooperation agreement, and that "a court in Washington" has less than 30 days to respond to the notice.

Popular culture

Carlos Lehder is portrayed as Diego Delgado in the movie Blow (film), a good friend and business partner, later nemesis of main character George Jung. In the TV series Escobar, el patrón del mal is portrayed by the colombian actor Alejandro Martinez although named Marcos Herber.