Sean Penn Article, 'My Article Failed'

IMAGE: ROLLING STONE

Sean Penn defends his El Chapo interview, but says the article was 'a failure' - Sean Penn is defending his interview with El Chapo, but he says the Rolling Stone article he wrote about their controversial meeting was "a failure."

This is the first time Penn has spoken about his meeting with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán since the article published on Saturday, just one day after Mexican police recaptured the fugitive leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Mexican officials said Penn's October interview helped in their search for Guzmán, who had escaped from a maximum security prison in the summer of 2015, and had been on the run ever since.

However, during a Thursday interview with CBS that will air in full on Sunday, Penn defended the interview and said there is no way it had any influence over Guzmán'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," Penn said. "We had met with him many weeks earlier...on Oct. 2, in a place nowhere near where he was captured."

When pressed, Penn said he did not aim to track down Guzmán, and instead met him through mutual contacts.

"Here's the things that we know: We know that the Mexican government ... they were clearly very humiliated by the notion that someone found him before they did," Penn said. "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."

But his biggest regret about the interview and subsequent article has nothing to do with Guzman's capture. Penn told CBS his "a terrible regret" is that the article did not achieve his main goal of starting a dialogue about the War on Drugs.

"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 said. "My article failed."

Penn traveled to a remote location in Mexico in October to meet with Guzmán after making contact through Mexican actress Kate del Castillo. The pair took an elaborate, secretive route through several intermediaries to get to Guzmán, according to Penn's 10,000-word account in Rolling Stone. Mexican authorities released surveillance photos this week, taken of del Castillo and Penn during their trip.

Penn said he believes the Mexican government is pointing to his interview as influential in securing Guzmán's capture to encourage the cartel to blame him for the leader's arrest. But Penn said he does not fear for his life.

He said his intention when interviewing El Chapo was to write a piece that highlighted the failure of the international war on drugs.

"'We're going to put all our focus — forget about blame — we're going to put all our focus, all our energy, all our billions of dollars on the 'bad guy,' and what happens? You get another death the next day the same way," Penn told CBS.