The bags were filled with cocaine.
But the cocaine was the least interesting thing about the Gulfstream.
Visiting its headquarters, youd find an unmarked door in an office park.
Colombian reconnaissance aircraft intercepting a Gulfstream I of an ICE front company in June 2006.Colombian Air Force
The legal term for doing business as.
According to government documents, it was an undercover company of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The coke jet was doing business asICE.
With its Gulfstream totaled, ICE, she claimed, had urged Malago to emigrate.
It was called Mayan Jaguar.
ICE Headquarters advised the agents … to continue working, according to another agents IG testimony.
The charges against Malago would eventually be dismissed, and no one else has been charged.
ICE declined to comment.
Even inside ICE, they found disquiet.
But why were ICE auditors not provided information about Donna Blue and its Gulfstream II for that clean audit?
The agent said he didnt know.
ICE, it seems, hid the Gulfstream from itself.
Always seamy, the narcotics trade was largely legal until global prohibition began in the early 20th century.
But CIA aviation simply fractalized andreformed, becomingP.O.
boxes,fictitious owners, andfly-by-night firms.
Called controlled delivery, the practice is secretive andunder scrutiny as overbroad.
In theory, shipments have to be under surveillance at all times and intercepted.
Each government along the way has to agree, he says.
Otherwise, youd be breaking their law.
There are inherent risks to controlled deliveries, like cartels sweeping for trackers.
Controlled deliveries have a history of slipping away and blowing back on three-letter agencies.
There are striking parallels to Mayan Jaguar.
Like the ICE operation, this CIA operation zeroed in on Venezuela.
As with the ICE operation, the DEA said the CIA operation should be called off.
Like ICE, the CIA had gone ahead anyway.
The uncontrolled shipments, as it turned out, may have totaled22 tons of cocaine.
Secrecy and competing claims still shroud Mayan Jaguar, although theres agreement that it was out of control.
But the worst-case scenario is ICE-as-cartel.
The agents did something they shouldnt have done.
The government did not do what it was supposed to do.
Montaldo was assigned as the Program Manager for Beachhead on Sept. 10, 2001.
The terrorist attacks the next day would prompt the formation of the DHS and its adjunct ICE.
He did not respond to voice messages.
One agent hung up.
Another professed to recall nothing except an air operation.
Mayan Jaguar would last at least three years under President George W. Bush.
According to an IG memo, some commissions werent documented, and an ICE agent could not recall why.
According to testimony to the IG, Malago became the primary source, brokering the majority of aircraft.
Malago worked with several front companies involved in Mayan Jaguar.
Public records of two planes raise the possibility that Mayan Jaguar brought cocaine to market.
(The plane drewonline fascinationbecause apictureshowed it with the tail number of asuspected CIA rendition plane.)
The Nicaraguan army toldLa Prensathat armed men had unloaded packages intoseven vans, leaving cocaine residues in the hull.
It seems unclear whether the cocaine was recovered.
What we know is that the remaining plane, a King Air 200,officiallydelivered a lot of cocaine.
Sky Way owned the plane when it allegedly delivered the cocaine, according to FAA records.
Sky Ways owner was an ICE informant, according to testimony to the IG.
So Sky Way was already seemingly an ICE front when its turboprop shipped the cocaine in early 2005.
(The owner did not respond to requests for comment, and is not accused of wrongdoing.)
The cocaine awaiting pickup, rather than being seized by ICE, was stolen by far-right narco-terrorists.
Sky Way would finally sell the plane in early 2008, after Mayan Jaguars purported end.
According to Aero Flight, a database compiled by so-called planespotters, it would beimpoundedthe next year by Venezuela.
As of late 2020, it was stillreportedlyin theirpossession.
And Malago worked with it, too, he and prosecutors would say in his later case.
That month, Venezuela accused the U.S. ofdrug traffickingandexpelled the DEA.
None of this would stop ICE.
I had no idea what I was doing, he admitted to the IG.
And he was unable to recall any direction from anyone regarding documentation of the wires.
(And the bookkeeper, he said, did not know how to keep good books.)
So, it seems, ICE didnt track the money, inspiring little confidence about the planes.
His answer: No.
Tropical Air had at least seven planes.
The crew landed at an airfield and escaped,El Mundoreported.
Residue would mean the plane had offloaded drugs at least once, says Levitsky.
Colombia announced that it could have carried up to 4 tons of cargo.
The governments triumphalpress releasedidnt mention any arrests or seized drugs.
Radio Santa Fereportedcocaine in the interior, without offering specifics.
Then theres the Boeing 727.
It was Mayan Jaguars largest purchase, a TWA passenger turned cargo jet with an eerie air.
Tropical Airbought itin late 2005 and flew it to Isla Margarita, a Venezuelan island in the Caribbean.
Nine months later, an anonymous source for a local newspaperdeniedrumors that the Venezuelan authorities were investigating the 727.
Instead, it was for sale on the island by Transporte Aereo Corporativo C.A.
A DEA memo notes that the DEA identified the 727 in an investigation.
(Venezuelaseizeda drug plane on the island from a Transporte Aereo Corporativo2006C.A.)
More than a year after that, something strange happened.
ICE, in its only comment, calls the data invalid.
A Boeing 727 could not fly that slow and would not fly at low altitudes.
They posit that an incorrect n-number could have been entered, but theres no way to know for sure.
And not just because of any illicit cargo.
Its last registered owner, Tropical Air, had been dissolved.
It was aghost plane.
Tropical Airs last two planes surfaced in investigations only to get away.
It had arrived in Venezuela in August 2006, coming under drug investigation the next year.
Sources linked to the National Guard denied the theft, according toEl Carabobeno.
Hijackers apparently absconded with a combined cargo capacity of another 6 tons.
It sounds like hundreds of millions [of dollars worth], he says.
And by the time it gets to the streets, it could be billions.
Allegations of this scale against the American government are rare.
Now they were coming from the American government.
Essentially, the governments own records suggest that ICE went rogue.
Sky Way apparently kept at it.
The two alleged Belgian pilots took off again, landed in the desert, and apparently vanished.
ICE said, Okay.
We are going to do it a different way.
Another ICE agent testified that this didnt follow standard protocol.
The Gulfstream had beige leather seats and a Langley pedigree.
ICE apparently bought a second jet fromNew World Aviation, a suspected CIA rendition contractor in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
(When reached for comment, that entrepreneur denied any knowledge before hanging up.)
CIA is committed to U.S. law.
The DNI supervises what it calls the Intelligence Community, including the CIA.
He did not know why.
The DEAs intervention resulted in the end of the operation, he said.
Once those agents came under investigation, those promises seemed to, of course, disappear.
ICE later put Malago on an immigration detainer, threatening him with deportation.
All the while he posed as an unwitting businessman.
ICE would eventually confirm Mayan Jaguars existence toNarco News,which asked an ICE spokesperson whether the operation succeeded.
Thequoted answer: I dont think anything came out of it.
The now-former spokesperson defers to ICE, which would not comment on a detailed summary of this reporting.
Hed fidget and appear nervous before admitting they still talked, according to DEA interrogation notes.
In 2012, he was indicted.
Hoffman limited the indictment to events that took place after Mayan Jaguars putative end.
Even so, she said, Mayan Jaguar achieved nothing.
It wasnt American-instigated investigations that drew in foreign nationals.
(Her office has nothing to add.)
I cant deny it.
But what I can tell you is that Malago had no obligation to keep track of the planes.
ICE is the one that has to document those things … not Malago.
Malago became collateral damage in a federal turf war, Quintero says.
The war starts because ICE Tampa violated the memorandum of understanding regulating DEA-ICE relations.
Malago was a free man.
Quintero says he caught witnesses lying and other prosecutorial mistakes.
Were transponders put on planes by Malago?
Were the planes tracked by ICE?
I have no fucking idea.
If a transponder was put in, I assume they were being tracked.
So did cartels know to remove the ICE trackers?
Quintero reasserts that ICE, not Malago, was the authority over the planes.
Itswebsitemarks a major improvement on Donna Blues slapdash effort.
Malago declined to comment on the record.
Malagos Gulfstream II is no more than scrap metal, but another may live on.
For all anyone knows, its still out there.
