Sean Penn finally got to tell his side of the story about his interview with Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He insists that the interview, which was conducted back in October, had nothing to do with the Mexican government finding Guzman on Jan. 8.
CBS News announced earlier this week that Charlie Rose was going to sit with Penn for an interview, which would be Penn’s first since the El Chapo interview was published by Rolling Stone. Although the interview took place in October, it was not published until the day after Guzman was captured. Since it took place months ago, Penn said there is no way it could have helped authorities find Guzman.
“There is this myth about the visit that we made, my colleagues and I with El Chapo, that it was -- as the Attorney General of Mexico is quoted -- 'essential' to his capture,” Penn told Rose. “We had met with him many weeks earlier...on October 2nd, in a place nowhere near where he was captured.”
Penn suggested that the Mexican government only put so much weight on Penn’s interview because they were “humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did.”
He continued, “Well, nobody found him before they did. We didn't -- we're not smarter than the DEA or the Mexican intelligence. We had a contact upon which we were able to facilitate an invitation.”
Although he doesn’t fear for his life, he thinks Mexico wanted to put blame on Penn and make him a target for the cartel. He is also disappointed that the discussion about the article has turned to how it was made instead of his point, that there needs to be a discussion on the War on Drugs policies.
“I have a regret that the entire discussion about this article ignores its purpose, which was to try to contribute to this discussion about the policy in the War on Drugs,” Penn told Rose. “Let's go to the big picture of what we all want. We all want this drug problem to stop. We all want them -- the killings in Chicago to stop. We are the consumer. Whether you agree with Sean Penn or not, there is a complicity there. And if you are in the moral right, or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs ... And how much time have they spent in the last week since this article come [sic] out, talking about that? One percent? I think that'd be generous.”
Penn also said that he was only able to get access to Guzman because he isn’t a traditional journalist. He called himself a “experiential journalist” and suggested that critics are jealous of his interview.
You can see the entirety of Penn’s interview on 60 Minutes Sunday.