Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw [Paperback]

Mark Bowden (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 2, 2002

A tour de force of investigative journalism-this is the story of the violent rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel. Escobar's criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage in a reign of terror that would only end with his death. In an intense, up-close account, award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes details never before revealed about the U.S.-led covert sixteen-month manhunt. With unprecedented access to important players—including Colombian president Cisar Gaviria and the incorruptible head of the special police unit that pursued Escobar, Colonel Hugo Martinez-as well as top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden has produced a gripping narrative that is a stark portrayal of rough justice in the real world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Readers of Black Hawk Down know Mark Bowden can tell an exciting story about as well as any writer at work today. Killing Pablo is further proof. It describes the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, a notorious Colombian drug lord who became one of the narcotic trade's first billionaires. Pablo--Bowden refers to him by his first name throughout the book--started out as a petty thief and wound up running a massive smuggling empire. At his height in the 1980s, he owned fleets of boats and planes, plus 19 separate residences in Medellin, each with its own helipad. Violence marked everything he did: "He wasn't an entrepreneur, and he wasn't even an especially talented businessman. He was just ruthless." He bought off police, politicians, and judges throughout his country, and killed many others who wouldn't cooperate. The Colombian government tried to capture him, but without much luck; he evaded them time after time. "Now and then the police achieved enough surprise to catch him, literally, with his pants down. In [1988], about one thousand national police raided one of his mansions," writes Bowden. "Pablo fled in his underwear, avoiding the police cordon on foot." He got away, again, but his days were numbered. He was making powerful enemies in both Colombia and the United States. The final straw probably came when Pablo's men murdered a popular politician and, three months later, planted a bomb on a plane, killing 110 people, including two Americans.

The bulk of Killing Pablo describes what happened when the U.S. government put its resources behind the hunt for Pablo. Bowden describes the search in gripping detail, from the massive electronic-surveillance effort to bureaucratic infighting between rival U.S. agencies. This is an outstanding work of reportorial journalism, too: in the epilogue, Bowden drops tantalizing hints that it was an American--not a Colombian--who delivered the killing shot to Pablo in 1993. Readers looking for a real-life thriller--or any kind of thriller, for that matter--won't do much better than Killing Pablo. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The author of the bestseller Black Hawk Down, which depicted the U.S. military's involvement in Somalia, Bowden hits another home run with his chronicle of the manhunt for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. He traces the prevalence of violence in Colombian history as background, then launches into the tale of the dramatic rise and fall of "Don Pablo," as he was known. Packed with detail, the book shows how Escobar, a pudgy, uneducated man who smoked marijuana daily, ruthlessly built the infamous Medellin cartel, a drug machine that eventually controlled much of Colombian life. As Bowden shows, the impotence of the Colombian government left a void readily filled by Escobar's mafia. While not ignoring the larger picture e.g., the terrible drug-related murders that wracked the South American country in the late 1980s and early 1990s Bowden never loses sight of the human story behind the search for Escobar, who was finally assassinated in 1993, and the terrible toll the hunt took on many of its main players.. There's a smoking gun here: Bowden charges that U.S. special forces were likely involved in helping some of Colombia's other drug lords assassinate perhaps more than a hundred people linked to Escobar. There's no doubt, according to Bowden, that the U.S. government was involved in the search for Escobar after a 1989 airplane bombing that killed 100 and made him, in Bowden's words, "Public Enemy Number One in the world." This revelation highlights one of Bowden's many journalistic accomplishments here: he shows how the search for Escobar became an end in itself. (May 8)Forecast: Bowden will go on a monster tour (about two dozen cities) to promote this BOMC selection, which also has its own Web site (www.killingpablo.com). Expect healthy sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; 1st Thus. edition (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142000957
• ISBN-13: 978-0142000953
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (252 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,411 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > History > Americas > South America > Colombia
  • #32 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Crime & Criminals
  • #92 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > True Accounts > True Crime

More About the Author

Mark Bowden is the bestselling author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, as well as The Best Game Ever, Bringing the Heat, Killing Pablo, and Guests of the Ayatollah. He reported at The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and now writes for Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and other magazines. He lives in Oxford, Pennsylvania.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 67 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Explosive! May 2, 2001

By Robert S. Campbell

Format:Hardcover

Killing Pablo is a hard-hitting book that truly represents the brutal reality of the war in Colombia. As a Special Forces Master Sergeant with multiple tours in Colombia I can honestly say that Mark Bowden has done a masterful job of encapsulating this conflagration by describing the events that led to the rise and fall of one of its most notorious figures-Pablo Escobar. Bowden starts off by giving a brief history of the war in Colombia, starting with La Violencia, and then of course the current Narco war that is currently consuming Colombia. The events are taken from various sources and Mr. Bowden does a superb job of describing, in detail, what lengths the US and Colombia went through to take down one of the largest criminal empires in history. The book ends with questions that we as American should be asking ourselves. Is it worth the effort - in the name of National Security- to selectively target foreign citizens for assassination? My conclusion is incomplete. However, I will say that the removal of Pablo Escobar was nothing more than a tactical victory in a war Colombia and the United States are losing strategically. This book is a must for Special Operations Soldiers, Latin American Historians, Law Enforcement Officers, and anyone who is involved in the policy decisions concerning the US war on drugs.

45 of 50 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Serious Account of the Grim Realities of the Drug War May 30, 2001

By Newt Gingrich THE

Format:Hardcover

Bowden has done it again. This is not quite the work of genius that Black Hawk Down was but this is a very engrossing and serious account of a manhunt that came to symbolize many of the challenges we face in the drug war. Pablo Escobar was the richest and most powerful cocaine dealer in the world. He acquired pretensions to enter politics and turn Colombia into a personal fiefdom. The United States government allied with the Colombian government in what became a multi-year campaign that was far harder and far more dangerous than any one would have believed when it began.

In the end Pablo was dead but the drug trade was as powerful and as profitable as ever. Its center of activity had moved from Medellin to Cali and the newer generation of drug lords had learned a lot from watching (and in fact participating in) the campaign against Pablo. In many ways the Cali cartel became the ally of the Colombian and American governments jointly seeking to get rid of Escobar.

This book raises serious questions about the nature of American involvement in the third world. When combined with Black Hawk Down you get a realistic pair of assessments of the limitations of American power and the nature of the grim realities we are trying to change in much of the third world.

This is a very helpful but sobering book for anyone interested in the drug war, in America's role in the world or in a recent skirmish with fascinating ramifications.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Summer's Better Reads May 20, 2001

By Steve Iaco

Format:Hardcover

I purchased "Killing Pablo" solely on the strength of Mark Bowden's previous stellar work, "Black Hawk Down." While "Pablo" isn't quite up to the standard of "Black Hawk" (one of the best books I've read in the past five years), it is nevertheless an engaging read that is at once informative and entertaining.

"Pablo" is Pablo Escobar, the ruthless Colombian drup kingpin who, by the late 1980s, had amassed one of the world's largest -- and certainly most illicit -- fortunes. Mr. Bowden recounts the story of how the notorious international narco-gangster was finally brought to heel by a combination of Colombian law enforcement agencies, the U.S. DEA and Army Delta Force (which provided critical training and surveillance technology), and importantly, Escobar's rivals in the cocaine cartel. The vigilante terrorism visited upon the infrastructure of Escobar's empire by his cocaine cartel rivals (equally as vicious as Pablo himself) -- with the tacit sanction of the Colombian government -- was the critical factor in the eventual tracking down and killing of Pablo following an off-and-on-again three-year manhunt.

This book is included in the "Wall Street Journal's" review (Friday, May 18) of the better reads of the Summer of 2001. That judgment gets no quarrel from this reader.