Sean Penn Says His El Chapo Article ‘Has Failed’

He tells Charlie Rose: “The discussion about this article ignores its purpose… to contribute to this discussion about the policy in the War on Drugs”

Sean Penn El Chapo Guzman
Rolling Stone / Courtesy of Sean Penn

Sean Penn‘s only regret about his interview with drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is that the resulting national conversation has not focused on the point of Penn’s article.

“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 Charlie Rose on “CBS This Morning.” “Let me be clear: My article has failed.”

“Let’s go to the big picture of what we all want,” he continued. “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.”

Penn also addressed the Mexican government’s claim that his and actress Kate del Castillo‘s visit with El Chapo led directly to the fugitive’s capture.

“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,” he said. “We had met with him many weeks earlier…on October 2nd, in a place nowhere near where he was captured.”

Rose asked Penn if he believes the Mexican government is making this claim because Penn embarrassed them and that they want the cartel to come after him. Penn replied simply, “Yes.” He went on to say, however, that he is not afraid for his life.

Penn interviewed El Chapo, currently the most notorious drug lord in the world, while he was on the run from the Mexican government and many others.

In an incredible tale involving secret messages and blind trust, Penn ventured into the Mexican jungle with actress Kate del Castillo and emerged with an on-the-record account for Rolling Stone that is surely stranger than any fictional film he’s starred in.

El Chapo disappeared from Mexico’s highest security prison last summer, escaping via a mile-long tunnel that some said cost $1 million to build. Penn wrote in the article that the drug lord hired German engineers to build the tunnel.

Watch the video below.

Comments