The Undercovers with Ed O’Niell

They are Federal Law Enforcement’s greatest allies in the war on drugs, terrorism, organized gangs, and arms dealing. Their life and work includes some of the most unbelievable, adventurous, shockingly, violent, and harrowing stories imaginable. They are The Undercovers, a new podcast thriller hosted by Ed O’Neill (Modern Family).

A bust goes deadly wrong in Pasadena. In its wake, we meet Eddie Follis who has worked his entire life to become a special agent for the DEA. He learns the ropes from the best in the business and comes face to face with an agent of the most powerful illegal drug merchant on Earth. This is how fast it can go bad.

After an elaborate undercover operation to bring down Southeast Asia’s biggest arms trafficker goes South, Eddie targets one of the world’s biggest opium dealers — who just happens to live outside L.A. Eddie is ready to risk his life, but what about the lives of those he loves the most? And what happens when Eddie feels the nose of a .22 jabbed into his ribs?

After a near brush with death and a brief stop in Honolulu’s field office, Eddie is assigned to work in the epicenter of the world’s heroin trafficking, The Golden Triangle. There he takes on an untouchable new foe, the largest exporter of heroin in the region – but first Eddie has to break into the target’s house and dodge a pack of mangy, angry dogs. Can he bring down the opium warlord nicknamed “The Prince of Death”?

Reassigned to Juarez, Mexico, Eddie hunts down Amado Carrillo-Fuentes, the “Lord of the Skies.” One death is faked, but another is all too real. And during multiple clashes along the border, Eddie has a brush with another future kingpin, a young cartel member named Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, also known as “El Chapo.”

Eddie witnesses the horror of American Airlines flight 77 roaring overhead and smashing into the Pentagon on 9/11. He would never be the same. Eddie is given his biggest and most dangerous assignment in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is at ground zero in the global war on terror when members of his team are kidnapped on the street and he must tear through the streets of Afghanistan to rescue them. Eddie meets a new threat named Haji Juma Khan. He was one of the biggest heroin traffickers in the biggest narco-state on the planet. He was also a friend of a thin, six-foot-four Saudi with dark strong eyes named Osama Bin Laden.

After forming a unique and complicated bond with the world’s biggest opium dealer, Haji Juma Khan (HJK), Eddie discovers his friend and foe HJK is on the “kinetic list” – he is marked for death by a drone from the sky. Eddie must make the most important decision he has ever made as a DEA agent; to save a life by taking it.

”The Undercovers” narrator Ed O’Neill sits in studio with real-life retired special agent Edward Follis to discuss the agent’s incredible career.

Ed O’Neill shares the studio with three additional undercover agents, whose stories will be the subject of future seasons: Hector Berrellez, Billy Queen and Paul Lipscomb. Ed also receives a special call from the godfather of all undercovers, the man best known as the real-life “Donnie Brasco,” Joe Pistone.

Episode recounts the events of July 28th, 1981, when word leaked to the five mafia
families of New York that Donnie Brasco, who was in line for formal induction into the Bonanno crime family member, was in fact, Special Agent Joseph Pistone of the F.B.I. The news sends a seismic shockwave throughout the five families, resulting in immediate hits and an unprecedented $500,000 bounty for the murder of Agent Pistone.

Former FBI agent Joseph Pistone takes us through some of the more harrowing parts of the Donnie Brasco operation that have yet to be shared, including a direct request from his capo for murder and a plot to team up with the Milwaukee mob that goes south.

After nearly being killed over another scam gone bad, former FBI agent Joe Pistone recounts his rise within the ranks of mafia, culminating in the Bonanno’s request to make him a “made man”.

When the FBI decides the Donnie Brasco operation is too dangerous, Agent Joseph Pistone must tie up all loose ends before he is pulled from the street. But a last moment request from his capo, Sonny Black, puts both the operation – and Joe’s life – in jeopardy.

When news of the Donnie Brasco operation leaks to the public, life changes for the former federal undercover agent who played him. And with a best-selling book and a film with Johnny Depp in the works, Agent Pistone decides for an early retirement.

Former agent Josph Pistone shares how and why he applied for reinstatement into the FBI. Because Pistone’s national fame and prestige made it nearly impossible for domestic undercover jobs, the FBI sends Agent Pistone overseas where he takes down a Chinese Triad ring in London, and is nearly killed in the jungles of another third-world country.