 NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. Good evening. In Miami today, two detectives were arrested on charges of shooting up the home of a drug dealer cooperating with federal authorities. Today's arrest came as seven other Miami officers went on trial accused of ripping off other cocaine dealers and for dealing drugs themselves. Miami is one of the principal branch offices for what can be called Cocaine Inc., a huge international business run by a relatively small band of smugglers operating out of Columbia. As NBC's Brian Ross reports tonight, this cocaine cartel, in many ways, is as sophisticated as a Fortune 500 company. Noontime in Miami. Downtown, office workers are at lunch. In the neighborhoods, first graders are on the playground. And on television, Nina has just told Cliff that she loves him, but also at this hour in Miami. On a shortwave radio band that most radios cannot pick up, the code of instructions from South America are coming in from a transmitter in Medellin, Columbia for members of the world's largest cocaine smuggling organization. For the last year now, government radio operators have been monitoring the secret transmissions between Medellin and Miami over what federal authorities have come to call Radio Medellin. First, there is a signal, a whistle, and then the message. In this message, cattle is the code word for cocaine. The cattle is ready. The cattle is ready. Not to worry, there is not one problem. At 8 o'clock, 8 for the first one. Radio Medellin sends out orders to dozens of Colombians who have been sent to Miami to work in the cocaine business, almost like foreign intelligence agents. Federal authorities say they discovered this man from Columbia handling large amounts of suspected drug money, and he is now under indictment. He and his family were found living quietly in a modest home with two cars and a well-kept lawn. One of dozens of Colombians federal authorities say have infiltrated the Miami area on orders from Columbia. They have a manual on how to fit into a community to make sure that they're not uncovered. United States Attorney Leon Kellner says the men from Medellin know just how to set up a cover for their cocaine business. Hire a gardener to make sure that the gardening is done. Hire a family to make sure it looks like somebody is living there. Make sure that you get the newspaper and that you pick it up every day. And this is Medellin, Colombia, about an hour's flight from Bogota where the secret radio transmissions, the orders to agents in Miami and the cocaine all come from. This city is the headquarters of what American authorities have now identified as the Medellin Cartel, a small group of men that in the last few years has formed a near monopoly on the processing and sale of cocaine. According to American officials, controlling as much as 80% of the world's supply. This is the En Vigato section of Medellin, a place where outsiders are not welcome. It is here that the cocaine bosses meet to buy up the crops of coca leaves to import the chemicals from Europe needed to process the cocaine. And it is here, somewhere, according to American authorities, at the top three men of the Medellin Cartel, all fugitives hide out and operate. They are Carlos later, 37, described by federal authorities as a psychopathic killer who has aligned the cartel with Colombia's M19 terrorists. Pablo Escobar, 36, under indictment in Miami for his role in setting up cocaine bases in Nicaragua, described as Colombia's wealthiest man. Jorge Ochoa, 37, caught in Spain earlier this year, but freed and now in hiding in Colombia after allegedly bribing a Colombian magistrate to fix his case. Federal authorities say these three men now run an organization more violent and at least as powerful as the American mafia. American authorities say it was the Medellin Cartel that ordered the murder of nine Colombian Supreme Court justices and the Attorney General, the murder of a key federal witness in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the murders in Miami of dozens of rival drug bosses. Are there places where they're more powerful than the government? Unfortunately, I think that that may be true. Richard Gregory, one of the country's leading federal narcotics prosecutors, is now tracking the move by the Medellin Cartel of its cocaine labs deep into the Colombian jungle. And Gregory says there are now intelligence reports that the cartel has a number of shoulder-held missiles. Perhaps the Russian-made SAM-7 demonstrated here. You're talking about a business that probably makes a couple of billion dollars a year, $50,000 weapon, or a couple of them that would ensure the protection of their laboratories. It doesn't surprise me at all. There was a cartel form to control the production of oil, OPEC. Another cartel for diamonds. And now here in Medellin, a new cartel for cocaine. And it seems to be able to murder, corrupt, and to operate just about anywhere it chooses to. Ryan Ross, NBC News, Medellin, Colombia.