How to Get Away with Murder in America: Drug Lords, Dirty Pols, Obsessed Cops, and the Quiet Man Who Became the CIAÕs Master Killer

This is a story that the CIA will not want you to read. It will likely shake your faith in the highest levels of AmericaÕs national security establishment. And it will leave you feeling as if you are living not in the United States but in a seedy banana republic where there is no line between the good guys and the bad guys.Ê In ÒHow to Get Away with Murder in America,Ó the celebrated journalist Evan Wright reveals the extraordinary story of Enrique ÒRickyÓ Prado, an alleged killer for a major Miami drug trafficker who was recruited into the CIA. Despite a grand jury subpoena and a mountain of evidence unearthed by a federal task force, Prado was promoted into the agencyÕs highest echelons and charged with implementing some of the countryÕs most sensitive post-9/11 counterterrorist operations, including the agencyÕs secret Òtargeted assassination unit.Ó All while staying in close touch with his cocaine-trafficking boss and, evidence suggests, taking part in additional killings for him.Ê After Prado retired in 2004 at the rank of SIS-2Ñthe CIA equivalent of a two-star generalÑhe moved to a senior position at Blackwater, the private military contractor, where he continued to run the same, now-outsourced Òdeath squad.Ó Contrary to government assurances that it was never actually activated, Wright reveals explosive testimony from one of the Blackwater assassins that PradoÕs unit was indeed carrying out assigned killings. As a former military intelligence officer told Wright in 2011, ÒPrivate contractors are whacking people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA.ÓÊ In ÒHow to Get Away with Murder in America,Ó Wright discloses never-before-seen federal investigation files and lays out a mind-boggling and ultimately damning indictment of Ricky Prado and the intelligence community that embraced and empowered him. It is the deeply disturbing story of a criminal case abandoned because of CIA intervention, political maneuvering, and possibly corruption. Its cast includes Mafia capos, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, former CNN host Rick Sanchez, and PradoÕs longtime boss at the CIA and then Blackwater, J. Cofer Black, who is now a Òspecial adviserÓ to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Wright also delivers a stunning portrait of PradoÕs childhood friend Albert San Pedro, a.k.a. Òthe Maniac,Ó the drug lord whom he served for years as loyal bodyguard and enforcer, as well as their longtime nemesis Mike Fisten, the detective who began pursuing them more than two decades ago and still hopes to put them both in prison for murder. There are many conspiracies in WrightÕs story, all of them unsettling. Did the CIA knowingly hire a suspected murderer with strong ties to drug traffickers? Or was the agency a stooge, infiltrated by an underworld hood described by one investigator as Òtechnically, a serial killerÓ? Ê ÒHow to Get Away with Murder in AmericaÓ is likely to have serious repercussions for the U.S. national security establishment. And it will shake to the core your conceptions of government and justice in America.