We live in the greatest nation on the face of the earth, but it needs to be protected from the inside just as much as from the outside. — DEA Veteran Keith Billiot
In Episode 9 of The Hero Next Door, hosts Nick Searcy and Dr. Darcy Leutzinger sit down with retired DEA Supervisory Special Agent Keith Billiot for a conversation that spans three decades of federal law enforcement, from his first unaccompanied drug buy at age 23 to the cartel crisis unfolding on Native American reservations today.
Keith Billiot grew up in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, as far southeast as the state goes. His father’s family are members of the United Houma Nation. No one in his family had ever worked in law enforcement. After a year as a commercial diver and three unfocused semesters of college, a chance meeting with retired customs agent Harold McGovern gave Billiot the clarity that would define the next three decades of his life: he wanted to chase the biggest and baddest criminals the federal government could put in front of him.
He locked in. He earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, worked nights as a prison guard at the Mississippi Department of Corrections to fund his education, and on January 8, 1990, at age 23, reported to the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics to begin buying drugs undercover with no formal training of any kind.
From Zero Training to Undercover Narcotics
At MBN, Billiot did nothing but undercover work for nearly eighteen months. He had no academy certification, no tactical instruction, and no mentor in the field. What he had was an ability to talk to anyone in any setting and make them believe whatever the situation required.
He bought cocaine, LSD, and MDMA across southern Mississippi, posing as everything from a girlfriend’s “boyfriend” to a mid-level distributor’s enforcer. The work taught him how to avoid pressure to use drugs during buys. His method was simple: present yourself as a businessman whose product has to make it back to someone who will weigh every gram. Refuse on professional grounds, not moral ones.
His time as a prison guard, though unrelated on paper, gave him a crucial education in reading people. Every inmate he encountered was a con man of some caliber. Learning to get compliance through verbal skill rather than physical confrontation became the foundation of his undercover career.
Three Decades with the DEA
When the federal hiring freeze broke, Billiot applied to the DEA, knowing no one inside the agency. Seven and a half months later, he reported to the academy. His first assignment was New Orleans.
In New Orleans, Billiot targeted Colombian and Dominican trafficking networks shipping multi-kilogram cocaine loads from Buenaventura, Colombia, aboard commercial vessels. He and a customs partner developed Filipino sailors as confidential informants, recruiting them at dockside bars to report on maritime smuggling routes. Operations were coordinated with DEA offices in Colombia; some loads were seized before they left South American ports.
Unlike most agents fresh from the academy, Billiot volunteered for undercover assignments immediately. Now he had what he lacked in Mississippi: a security team, electronic surveillance, court-authorized trackers, and access to the DEA’s extensive fleet of surveillance aircraft. He rose to run an investigative group in Chicago, lead an SRT team, and command a Quick Reaction Team that deployed nationally under Stafford Act declarations for natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
The Capture of Christopher “Dudus” Coke
In 2006, Billiot transferred to the DEA Special Operations Division at headquarters. There, he coordinated the case against Christopher Michael Coke, the only individual simultaneously designated a Consolidated Priority Organization Target by both the DEA and the State Department.
Coke led the Shower Posse, the enforcement arm of Jamaica’s Labour Party. His father, Lester Lloyd Coke, had been incinerated in his own prison cell under suspicious circumstances before facing extradition. The younger Coke controlled Tivoli Gardens in West Kingston with thousands of armed followers and corruption that, by all available intelligence, reached the highest levels of Jamaican government.
Billiot flew to Jamaica and briefed Minister of National Defence Peter Phillips, offering to extract Coke quietly with a DEA FAST team. Phillips refused, calling Coke “a minor thug.” When Jamaican security forces eventually moved on Tivoli Gardens, the result was catastrophic: Kingston was placed under martial law; five police stations were attacked; between 75 and 78 people were killed; more than 260 were wounded; and over 200 homes were destroyed.
Coke, remembering what happened to his father in Jamaican custody, disguised himself as a woman and attempted to reach the U.S. Embassy to surrender. DEA intelligence identified him in the embassy line. He waived extradition, was transported to the United States by DEA agents and U.S. Marshals, and is currently serving a 23-year federal sentence.
Deadly Force and the Price of Survival
On June 2, 2018, Billiot’s investigative group in Chicago tracked a mid-level cocaine distributor using a court-authorized GPS device. The target collected a quarter-kilogram of cocaine after delivering nearly $12,000 in cash to his source. When a deputy attempted a traffic stop, the suspect fled at 115.2 miles per hour. Billiot ordered the pursuit terminated to protect civilians and followed the GPS signal instead.
When Billiot caught up and attempted a vehicle box at a red light, the suspect reversed, then accelerated directly at Billiot, who was standing stationary in front of the stopped vehicle giving verbal commands. Billiot fired his rifle. The vehicle struck him, causing permanent spinal damage. The suspect died at the scene. Billiot’s agents pulled the suspect from the car and attempted to save his life.
Both the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State’s Attorney cleared the shooting. A veteran CPD shooting investigator called it the cleanest justification he had worked in 22 years. Just before the two-year statute of limitations expired, the suspect’s family sued Billiot in his personal capacity. For four years, the case continued until the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the lower court and cleared Billiot completely.
The Ferguson Effect
Weeks before FBI Director James Comey publicly coined the term “Ferguson effect,” Billiot raised the same concern directly to the DEA administrator during an agency visit to the Chicago Field Division. He told the administrator he was watching officers across law enforcement hesitate to use lawful, necessary force because they feared becoming a viral video, facing prosecution, or being abandoned by their own agencies. The administrator disagreed. Days later, Comey publicly validated the concern.
Billiot confirmed the parallel to the 2025 case in which a driver named Renee Good accelerated her vehicle into a stationary ICE agent who was giving lawful verbal commands in front of her stopped car. The legal framework is identical: in both incidents, the officer was standing still, the vehicle was stopped, and the driver chose to accelerate into law enforcement rather than comply.
Cartels on Native American Reservations
Billiot, himself a member of the United Houma Nation, described cartel infiltration of tribal lands as an invisible national security crisis. The conditions are ideal for exploitation: extreme remoteness, jurisdictional gaps that prevent county law enforcement from operating on sovereign territory, chronically underfunded tribal police forces, and poverty that makes bribery cheap and effective.
Only a small number of federal agencies have authority on reservation land. The FBI covers major crimes under an 1885 statute. The DEA can act under Title 21 narcotics authority. But routine patrol coverage is effectively nonexistent on reservations like the 2.2-million-acre Wind River Range in Wyoming.
Cartels use reservations for methamphetamine production, drug storage and transshipment, and human trafficking. They embed operatives through romantic relationships with tribal members and distribute cash in communities where it goes far. The drugs are not staying on reservations; they are moving into American cities.
Four years ago, Billiot partnered on “Invisible: Life and Death on the Reservation,” an Audible project documenting the murders of two young Native American women on the Wind River Reservation. One of those murders occurred within a year of the Gabby Petito disappearance. While Petito’s name commanded global media coverage, the indigenous victim received none. Billiot noted this is not an anomaly but a pattern affecting hundreds or thousands of missing and murdered indigenous women.
He confirmed that an investigative journalism project with Proud American Studios is in preparation to report on cartel operations in tribal territories.
After the Badge
Billiot now runs Fearless Security Solutions, a full-service investigative and executive protection firm. Recent work includes a corporate fraud investigation in Louisiana, solving a triple homicide on a golf course in Kennesaw, Georgia, and executive protection assignments for film productions in Colombia and Brazil. On one production, “The Last Photograph,” Billiot and fellow retired DEA agent Rich Dobrich ended up with speaking roles as mercenaries, drawing directly on their operational backgrounds.
The Hero Next Door Episode 9 is streaming on Proud American Studios.
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