Documents: US drug agents knew of escape plots in 2014

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The weekend disappearance of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman from a maximum-security prison should have come as little surprise to Mexican authorities: The Drug Enforcement Administration had alerted them 16 months ago about several plans to escape.

Mexico’s most-notorious drug trafficker began plotting to break out almost immediately after his recapture at a seaside resort in February 2014. Internal DEA documents obtained by The Associated Press revealed that drug agents first got information in March 2014 that Guzman family members and drug-world associates were considering “potential operations to free Guzman.”

Mexico’s Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said late Monday that authorities were never informed “in that respect,” referring to previous escape plans. He said U.S. counterparts also said they didn’t know where the escape information in the AP story came from.

But a U.S. official briefed on the investigation confirmed to the AP that the Mexican authorities were alerted about the plots. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details.

Since the 1990s, his violent and powerful cartel has been known for digging sophisticated smuggling tunnels under the U.S. border with Mexico. Guzman was first arrested in 1993 but escaped in Jalisco from one of Mexico’s top-security prisons in January 2001. He evaded capture in early February 2014 through an elaborate network of tunnels that connected multiple safe houses in Culiacan, in his home state of Sinaloa, and was arrested again two weeks later.

Jim Dinkins, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, said Guzman’s history of tunneling makes Saturday’s escape “ingenious.”