With david samuel. David is the author of the runner and only love to break your heart. He has articles about conmen, nuclear weapon, spies, rock stars, pot dealers, president s and other subjects who have appeared in harpers, the new yorker and New York Times magazine. Without further ado, please give them a warm welcome. [applause] i just want to start off by saying this, i rarely leave my house and i never endorse the work of fellow riders because why give them a leg up, there your competition, but i made an exception to both of those professional tonight because this book is an extraordinary piece of reporting. Its an incredibly gripping story and its a story that, on so many levels, is about where america is at an right now, in 2016, we are a country that has lost the ability to look in the mirror and see ourselves clearly because the viewers have, for nearly a century, the familiar track with newspapers and magazines has been shattered over the past ten years. It has been a flood of images and impressions outside of any editorial guidance for control and while theres a lot of good to be said, i think that certainly in the short run we are looking at something that is sharp and when things come back at us in the form of political candidates or crises, they say thats not america, except it is america. We are all in it together and dan has done the things that twitter doesnt do and facebook doesnt do which is that they are on a journey to a place emotionally and was able to connect with people who im sure when he started he couldnt imagine at all who they have an intimate feel for. As someone whos been doing these kind of work for 20 odd years now, i think you know it when you see it. When their action is precluded in learning something and getting people through life and understanding what was, you see that on a page and its there or its not there. Its never there, and its not there and things that pass most the time, but kudos to dan for doing the extraordinary amount of work, both in terms of time and putting yourself out there emotionally and being able to connect with this type of project and the people who made it happen because its rare and its hugely important that it exists at all and that people can read it which they should. With that done, why dont we tell people, im sure some of you have read the book and the rest of you should go home and read it tonight, you wont be able to put it down. Tell me a bit about the two characters of the heart of the two American Kids. It would be hard to top that. I learned about gabriel nearly seven years ago, a New York Times article so as much as we rip on the press, had it not been for the times, i wouldnt have thought about the story. The New York Times is a great newspaper. I read this article in june of 2009. I had just been laid off as a reporter at the wall street journal and was at that time in your life when youre down and wondering what youre going to do with your future and where youre going to go when youre a writer and you know and a lot of people in this room know that its often hard because the avenue forward is not obvious, but i read the story in the times while i was collecting Unemployment Insurance and it was the sort of story that you just dont forget. It was a story about two american boys who become assassins and become contract killers for a Big InternationalDrug Organization in mexico. I couldnt stop thinking about them. I didnt know what they meant at the time. I didnt know to what extent they were anomalies or what extent they represented something larger. A few months later my curiosity actually took me to mexico which is a state on the other side of mexico from where they operated on the pacific side and its been getting a lot of press lately because its his antics, escaping from prison in getting arrested. Outside of the capital city, theres a cemetery known officially as the cartel cemetery. So i visited the cemetery and there were a bunch of godey model lambs around the mid level highlevel men in the cartel are buried in their families had a lot of money and bought them these big houses that look almost like a tv condominium in miami or something. Then in the middle of the cemetery is just this open field where the plane headstones are and when i walked around the middle, i started noting on the headstones and i was there in 2010, most of them were after 1990 and they started averaging out a dozen or thursday of the headstones and the average age was 17 and so i thought back and it struck me that they were anomalies, they were part of a huge trend and that everything i have been reading about the drug lords and the generation before that i grew up with, the real war on drugs had nothing to do with those mythic stories but the war in mexico along the border is about young men and boys and thats eventually what it came down to. Youve lost your job and you go to mexico and youre looking at the test zones and what comes next, youre like hey could somebody introduce me to the people that are on these, that was in the dream if i had spoken fluid spanish but i actually went home and spent the next several years reading everything i could read on the history and drug cartel and actually wrote another book called love in the form of a logarithms and it was about the Online Dating business, a totally different story and i kept on reading about the drug world and in the summer of 2013, shortly after the dating book was published, i set saw a man that he was the person recruited these boys in south texas in the radio and really trained them to be like him. The zetas were were a cartel, they are a cartel that originated from the mexican military. We hear a lot about the corruption in mexico and being on the payroll but its hard to grasp the full understanding of it. Kind of like the green berets here in the state. They decided it would be much more lucrative to go work for a cartel. Thats how they started and they evolved from there, but that militaristic, take no prisoner remained with them as they evolved and that was the culture in which these boys were inducted. Where did these cartels come from . The cartels can come from many different eras. Theres some that are very old cartel in mexico that have been around since the 1940s, you see a lot of them pop up and it starts with the Family Living in a village somewhere that the sides were going to take over our village or our town and to take over that town and sometimes they want to get rid of the cartel and they get some power as the vigilantes and then there often adrift. Theres a wonderful addition to the story. Its offhanded but deeply informed take on the political and social structure of Mexican Society that enables the network to flourish. It shows how the cartels are bound up with the party in mexico. The pri was the dominant Political Party in mexico and some of it call it a dictator dictatorship and some call it the one party rule and they emerged after the revolution in the 1920s and it was one party rule and they started to emerge in that time where it was possible to go to mexico city and pay off one entity. As the marcus he started to come to mexico in this environment happened, the cartel became much worse because it was no longer clear who to bribe. In the old days they could pay the official and they would write their check and receive what they could and couldnt do. Everyone underneath that official fell in line and it bought you the rights to do certain things. After a while it was no longer clear, you bribe the federal police in mexico city and that was a factor as was nafta, nafta really accelerated things. Talk about that. So as many of you know, it was was implemented in 1994, it was really a centerpiece of prosperity, it was going to be what remade the American Economy and one of the things that it was going to achieve and really did achieve meant that we here in america, we could get things a lot cheaper. Those sunglasses at walmart and such could now be manufactured in mexico and imported back without tax. Now we were able to use the cheap labor. That was a cheap thing. The less good thing is that it made smuggling a lot easier. It really opened up the border and it was like laredo texas at the time and now even its the biggest Overland Court in the western hemisphere. All is then by the late 90s, they they were seeing 50 or 60000 trucks come north for weeks and it became impossible to monitor all that traffic. Now it just became harder and a lot easier. Into the city, these two boys are born. Shortly before nafta was implemented. They call them nafta babies. It was in a world that nafta helps to shape and the reality of where money comes from as they grow up. How do you make money . You are living in laredo in 1986, 1987. If youre born on the south side of laredo, the way to make more than 15 or 20000 a year appears to be the narcotics and theres actually a vast economy that involves moving guns and vehicles and those actually go to mexico and are sold to the cartel and so theres a market for the currency and the drugs and thats a very buoyant market and so when youre going up in these neighborhoods, there are examples of people who have really made it and their people who have made their money in that market. Tell the story of gabriel because its an amazing story. For some reason hes a character of the two of them what kind of family did he grow up in, what was his mom like,. How did his life as an american kid become intertwined with the dynamic stuff. Gabriel was a fairly promising kid. He grew up in a typical family. He is from my ghetto on the south side of laredo, its called aztec and its been a smuggling community for 250 years. He was a football player, he was very charismatic and did wellin school and attended sunday school every weekend. For a time in his life he appeared to be one of those kids who might leave the ghetto and do something more. It does occasionally happen. Instead, around his freshman year of high school his dissent from there was very fast. By dissent, you mean what. It actually began, ironically with him buying guns from a laredo cop and smuggling them across the border and selling them in mexico. This is a cop who had a catalog. Yes, there was actually a cop who would bring these kids lawenforcement magazines for them to page through. That was how he got his start. Does he have family south of the border or how did he get those connections . He did have family south of the border. His mother had a family house and his sister and lots of aunts and cousins. He grew up from the time that he was a baby going across every weekend. He took pride in being an american because he knew how many more opportunities he had and when he eventually joined the cartel, later he was. Are there explanations that date back to the 1950s and it was probably called juvenile delinquency or something where people would say well, its all economics or its the absence of the father in the household, blah blah and we were supposed to put on a pious face as they were recycled over and over again. Another set of explanations that we all know to be true which is that the young man liked feeling powerful and he wanted more weapons and power over people and its a more powerful drug been anything ive ever made mind. I dont believe that. So they say. How would you, when you look at the trajectory, would you say [inaudible] unless the economy was better or do you have a pious explanation for how he couldve been turned away from a life of crime . Do you believe that there is evil. I dont it was one thing, i am a champion of the pious explanation and we stopped talking about drug policy for a minute and talk about policies and again here, fighting poverty, helping families stay together, more Job Opportunities because i do believe once a family breaks up or once the father is gone or you no longer have that role model and at the same time youre in a family with no resources and youre in an environment where everyone is becoming a smuggler and thats the cool thing to do and the aspiration, yes, at that point your chances look very grim. I do think that the pious explanation holds but also what she said is huge, the advantage of a boy, he also had consequence because when he falls, he bounces. He will bounce for a little while so i think thats partly what drove these boys. If you talk to lawenforcement people in laredo, one that is here tonight or if you talk to the u. S. Attorney who handled that case, they they all have their own explanations and it just shows that it isnt really one thing. Here in the u. S. , i feel like the pious note is focused on policy. Marijuana legalization or the opioid problem. As if these things can be dealt with in a vacuum. I dont think they can be dealt with in a vacuum. Seeing the occasional drug user, i was especially fascinated by something called roaches. Roaches used to be known as an early generation of spanish fly. To our generation there known as rupees and their powerful tranquilizer back, fearful was ever illegal in the u. S. , its not legal here anymore. Its very easy to get in mexico. They are produced by a Company Called hoffman and laroche. Kids in the rado called them roaches. Theyre very popular as a party pill. They are very, very strong and they have varied effects and what they do with gabriel is essentially render them and it was roaches that he was able to engage in a lot of the brutality and violence that he did with the cartel. Gabriel was turned from a promising yet delinquent child from the American City of laredo texas to a trained killer, that to me is the most mind blowing part. It seems like it happen slowly for a while and then it happened all at once. He started living a life of violence around the age of 13 or 14 when he got into his first fight. He shot someone when he was 15, shot him in the leg. That was retaliation for when he had been shot and then at 17, the leader at that point and thats when he really learned how to kill in a professional and industrial sense. Would you say the Training Camp in mexico, could you describe that a little . Yes, its a camp where they would send anyone for 52100 recruits at a time. Most of these were mexican boys and mexican young men but some of them were american. He was one of the first to attend the camp. Certainly one of the First Americans and you go there and its run by a team of mercenaries and some of them are original members and they hire people from israel, they were hiring mercenaries from columbia to come and teach in the purpose of the Training Camp and the people running the cartel and they can find that out pretty quickly. The ones who are able to do it and they get weeded out and set aside or the other ones get weeded out. As i was reading the details of the group some and heartbreaking and mind blowing, i kept asking myself, how was he able to get up inside these peoples head in this intimate way. As a reporter i know how hard that is and i know how grounded that has to be to feel like, especially under the course, did you ever meet him . I visited him in prison twice between those visits and after, we exchange a thousand pages of letters. That was really the basis for the book in addition to my trips with laredo, he was the homicide detective who really was the leader in pursuing these boys when they start to commit murders. [inaudible] [applause] so you actually were penpals with this guy. Yes, it was the most bizarre and one of the most interesting reporting experience of my life, exchanging letters over such a. Of time. The relationship went up and down. You go through dating apps. Penpal with the zeta killer. I see the blue line now. Is a very smart guy. I think people can tell that from reading the book. He is very intelligent and this is how he decided to use his intelligence and his intellect. He was able to explain so much to me and he had this very detailed memory so i was able to combine that with letter writing relationships that i had with other boys who work with him who are from the same neighborhood and who knew him since he was a kid. He was talking to his girlfriend , going to the clubs and the bars that they used to go to and the restaurants that they use to go to. How does that feel . Thats one of those things thats discussed that as youre describing their lives going up and what its like, i dont know why, but i feel like im there and its because you were there. Yes, it wasnt until the very end but it drew me in. I dont know why this is right but i know this is right. If i could just get on my book writing publishing soapbox for a minute, as a writer you can probably tell that last chapter was where i talk about the reporting process. At an earlier stage that was more like an introduction. I read a book by catherine that came out in 2012 called behind beautiful forever and its one of my favorite books, one of my favorite nonfiction books and she didnt have an introduction. She had and after words where they talked about the reporting and i thought that was the coolest thing because i hate introductions to nonfiction books. I feel like if you have to tell people what youre trying to say, you probably havent said it properly. I wanted to force myself to focus on the body of the book and not the presentation of the book, not on convincing readers of what i wanted to be, but actually making it. All along, i was hoping to be able to make it a chapter or an afterword and it became the final chapter. Heres a question that people asked me often on with stuff i write write and i always hate this question so i would ask it to you and you can answer. Why do you think these people talk to . Why do you think gabriel wrote you 1000 pages of of letters . Thats a great question. My agent asked a a couple times. He is essentially in solitary confinement and he will be there probably and definitely. Hes been there since he was 19 and he is going to be imprisoned for life. I came along and he was used to seeing reporters who were swooping in for the quick story and he got to know the ways of that world pretty well. I think the more i stuck around and the more i sort of showed myself not to be interested in the quick hit but something larger, the more comfortable he became with me. Became more like a relationship than a sort of professional reporter subject thing. The scope of the project helped. What did he want from it . I think he wanted a lot of things. On different days he wanted different things. I think on his best day, he wanted to tell a cautionary story. In a way, yes. Like maybe my life can be used for something better. One of the things, the second half where he started to press on was the sense that were used to seeing the problems of mexico south of us