Mexico drug lord escape tunnel was too elaborate to miss

The digging would have caused noise. The planners would have needed blueprints and maps. The escape was made from the one place beyond the view of security cameras at Mexico’s toughest prison. As authorities hunted Monday for any sign of Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, security experts said it’s clear that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s escape through an elaborately designed tunnel must have involved help on a grand scale. “How did Chapo escape? In one word: corruption,” wrote Alejandro Hope, a former member of Mexico’s domestic intelligence service, in his blog El Daily Post. “He escaped through a mile-long tunnel, wide enough to hold a motorcycle, and ending in one of the few blind spots in Mexico’s most-secure prison. How do you do that without some high-level corruption?” A tunnel of such sophistication — with lights, air venting, and a customized motorcycle rigged up on a rail line — would have taken 18 months to two years to complete, said Jim Dinkins, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations...more