An ex-FBI agent who spent many years undercover within a notorious cartel has shared the heavy toll it took on him.
Martin Suarez was with the FBI from 1988 to 2011, spending much of his career as a special agent under the alias ‘Manny’. This double life, he admitted, had a significant psychological impact.
In an interview with People, Suarez discussed the challenges of being deeply embedded in the North Coast Cartel, a violent criminal organization in Colombia.
“When you’re working deep undercover for months or years at a time, your personality changes,” Suarez shared. “The push and pull of Martin and my undercover alter-ego, Manny, was ever-present, and it bled over into my family life.
“I always operated best when I did not compartmentalize my two personas, but rather was both Martin and Manny at the same time. And while that produced the best results with my cases, it also weighed the heaviest on my psyche.
“And I did sympathize with some of the cartel men. As someone who grew up in Puerto Rico in the 1960s, I knew what poverty could do to a person’s moral compass. But I always reminded myself that they made these decisions, and it was my job to take them down.”
This insight into the life of an undercover FBI agent follows Suarez’s decision to have a biography written about his experiences, titled Inside the Cartel: How an Undercover FBI Agent Smuggled Cocaine, Laundered Cash, and Dismantled a Colombian Narco-Empire.
Unlike many former undercover agents who refrain from revealing their past for safety reasons, Suarez’s decision to speak comes after his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
For those unfamiliar, ALS is a progressive neurological disease affecting nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, progressively worsening over time, as explained by the Mayo Clinic.
Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after the baseball player who had it, ALS affects muscle control, starting with minor symptoms like twitching and weakness in a limb or difficulties with swallowing or speaking. Over time, it impacts the muscles required for movement, speech, eating, and breathing.
The condition is ultimately fatal and currently incurable, with most patients living three to five years post-diagnosis, although some can live much longer, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Recalling his most terrifying moment undercover, Suarez recounted: “To this day, I can still feel the hitman’s gun pressed against the back of my skull.
“It was 1994, and I had been working deep undercover for six years straight. I had just closed my case where I had posed as a money launderer for the North Coast Cartel [of Colombia].
“The indictment had just been unsealed – and I was the only person not charged. That gave me away.”
He continued: “The cartel’s money boss, [known as] ‘El Toro Negro’, sent a sicario [hitman] to kill me. I had never thought that I would be found, but I was wrong.
“As the assassin told me to get down on my knees, I thought I was a goner. But I kept my family in my heart, and told myself I wasn’t going to die that day.”