J ust before dawn on Sept. 24, 2007, a red, white, and blue Gulfstream II fell from the sky over the Yucatán Peninsula. The

It Was Supposed to Be a Sting Operation. Did ICE Traffic Drugs Instead?

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2024-09-27 03:30:02

J ust before dawn on Sept. 24, 2007, a red, white, and blue Gulfstream II fell from the sky over the Yucatán Peninsula.

The private jet had taken off without passengers from Rio Negro, Colombia, for Cancún, Mexico, more than 1,200 miles north, but crossed radar as a suspicious flight, tried to outrun scrambled Mexican military aircraft, and crash-landed.

The fuselage skidded into the jungle and split into three neat segments, and the cockpit rolled upside down, somehow sparing the two pilots, who fled on foot. Mexican commandos captured and arrested them, and from the wreckage, removed 132 industrial trash bags, weighing around 4 tons. The bags were filled with cocaine. But the cocaine was the least interesting thing about the Gulfstream.

Under its prior owner, this plush ride had flown for the CIA’s rendition program, a network of planes in corporate camouflage that shuttled terrorism suspects to black sites or Guantanamo Bay. When it went down, it belonged to a newly-formed company near Boca Raton, Florida, called Donna Blue Aircraft. Googling it at the time, you’d find a half-finished website, listing a 555 phone number and a testimonial from satisfied customer “John Doe.” Visiting its headquarters, you’d find an unmarked door in an office park. And its acronym? The legal term for “doing business as.” Donna Blue Aircraft looked, in other words, like a crudely imagined front, and that’s exactly what it was. According to government documents, it was an “undercover company” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.