back to indexRoger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel | Lex Fridman Podcast #199
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The following is a conversation with Roger Reeves,
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one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.
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He worked for Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa,
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the leaders behind the Medellin Cartel.
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Roger was the employer and close friend of Barry Seal,
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the infamous drug smuggler who was the main character
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in the movie American Maid.
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Roger transported countless tons of cocaine and marijuana
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covering six continents.
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He escaped prison five times,
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was shut down in both Mexico and Colombia,
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and was tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison.
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Through all of this, his wife Mari, the love of his life,
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was there with him, and when he was in prison,
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she waited for him.
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He recently got out of prison where for many years
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he worked on his memoir called Smuggler.
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This podcast is an exploration of his story.
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Quick mention of our sponsors.
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Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Aidsleep.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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Let me say a few words about Roger Reeves,
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Pablo Escobar, and the war on drugs.
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This conversation with Roger is unlike any I've ever done.
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In the eyes of many, including the law,
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Roger is a criminal, a bad man who was added
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to the suffering in the world.
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But he never directly engaged or participated
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Unlike his bosses, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.
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His crime was the transport of drugs.
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I thought about this, and about Pablo Escobar,
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who was at once both a brutal murderer
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and a Robin Hood figure who helped the poor
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and was loved by thousands, if not millions.
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We sometimes idolize murderers and destroy good, honest men.
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We give power and money to corrupt politicians
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and dictators that starve and murder their own people.
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Given this, I think about what makes for a good man,
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and what makes for a bad man, and who decides.
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Sitting across from Roger, I saw a complicated man,
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but one who has kindness in his heart,
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a love for money and adventure, and a disdain for violence.
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Again, his crime was the transport of drugs.
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Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost U.S. $1 trillion.
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Marijuana legalization alone would save
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and make $13.7 billion, that could send
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more than 650,000 students
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to public universities every year.
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Then there's the human stories of the 500,000 human beings
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sitting in prison for drug related offenses,
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and the 1.1 million on probation and parole.
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Their life is damaged or ruined beyond repair
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due to the prohibition of drugs.
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There's a lot more to be said about the damage done
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by the war on drugs, but when reading about Roger's story
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and talking to him, I couldn't escape the thought
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that while society wants to label him a criminal
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and a bad human being, there are much worse men out there
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who we give a pass to, even give power to,
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even men who hold political office or run companies.
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I also think about my role as an interviewer,
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sitting across a man like Roger.
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In these interviews, in life,
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in many ways I continue to be myself,
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a person who like Dostoyevsky's The Idiot,
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seeks the good in all people,
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but is hurt by it on occasion,
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and maybe is destroyed by it in the end.
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I'm not naive, but I'm also optimistic
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and have hope for humanity.
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That's who I am, and that's what these conversations are.
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I hope you join me, and I hope you understand
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that I come from a place of love.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast,
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and here's my conversation with Roger Reeves.
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You are one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.
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What would you say motivated you?
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Money, power, the thrill, or was it something else?
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But isn't there a point where you've had more money
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than you can possibly know what to do with,
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or is it always more money?
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You know, I had plenty of money several times,
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and I think it's sort of like if you was in Las Vegas
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and you had the slot machine handled down,
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and the gold coins was tumbling around you,
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and you had sweepers bagging them up,
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when would you let it go?
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But isn't some part of that the thrill then?
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Oh, there was a lot of thrill, sometimes way too much.
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You made certainly tens of millions of dollars,
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probably much more.
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What memorable experience
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did having that much money make possible for you?
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So there's one thing is the money,
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and the other thing is what that money can buy.
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Well, I bought everything that I could hide.
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I bought seven farms.
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the land where the city of Moreno Valley, California is.
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I had an option on that land.
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Did the planning and development of that.
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The most expensive coin in the world.
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Yachts, ships, airplanes galore.
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Did that bring you happiness?
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No, absolutely not.
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In fact, I think I'm happier now.
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I know I'm happier now.
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So looking back, would you do it the same way all again?
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Really, even the thrill of it?
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Not even thrill of it.
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It wasn't worth 33 years in prison,
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being away from my lovely family.
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So money, what about the power?
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Just being on top of the world where nobody can,
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not the governments, the police,
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all the big, bad agencies chasing you,
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and you could do whatever the heck you wanted.
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As far as having to look over your shoulder
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everywhere you went and every phone call you made,
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make sure that you was naked with somebody in the ocean
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before you talked.
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It's rather uncomfortable.
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I like to make phone calls the same way.
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What was it like meeting and working with Pablo Escobar,
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the leader of the Medellin Cartel?
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He was just, just seemed like a gentleman when I met him.
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He was just like you and I, sitting here, shook hands,
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and I had flown one load for a fellow,
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and it didn't work out well.
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The fellow that I gave it to got shot,
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and it took a while to get my money,
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and they didn't put as many kilos on the plane
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as they're supposed to,
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and so I wasn't gonna work with him anymore,
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and my contact down there introduced me
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to Jorge Ochoa, and we went up,
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and in Vigado, we went up and the gate opened,
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and we was escorted in.
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There must have been 50 men out in the yards,
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hitching a rail on an old house,
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and we was escorted right in,
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and there was a beautiful woman in there.
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I mean, gore, drop dead beautiful,
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and she made us a cup of coffee,
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then ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa,
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and he had 12 telephones on his desk,
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and all of them was a different color,
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and he shook hands, was very friendly, spoke English,
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and he said that each one of those telephones
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represented another city in the United States.
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This is Chicago, and this is New York.
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If I ring, I knew who was calling,
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and so we chatted a while,
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and he asked me what type of airplanes I had
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and what experience I had flying across the U.S. border,
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and I told him he seemed pleased with it,
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and he called the lady in, and she went next door,
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and in came Pablo Escobar,
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and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar,
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and he asked the same questions again,
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and I answered him, and I asked him how much he paid,
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and he paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it,
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and so I said, how much you put on the plane?
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He said 300, 500, so that's one and a half,
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two and a half million dollars for an eight hour trip.
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Sounded pretty good to me.
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And we're talking about cocaine.
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Cocaine. And we're talking
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Colombia, and cocaine, and Medellin cartel.
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And Jorge Ochoa was one of the, what would you say,
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founding members of the Medellin?
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He was probably the brains behind the whole thing.
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The brains, and spoke good English.
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And they were nice people.
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Really nice people.
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What's wrong with your mind that you weren't scared?
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Here's some of the most dangerous men in this world,
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and you weren't scared.
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Well, I knew I was gonna do exactly what I said
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Murray and the children were down there.
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They went down and they stayed in the hotel,
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five stars, treated royally on my first load.
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And they just did ask security to make sure
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that I wasn't a DEA agent.
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So I did the first load,
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and they can say they were hostages,
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but they really weren't.
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It was just insurance.
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So there was some integrity to the way they operated.
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I mean, straight up.
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The money was ironed and banded,
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banded and just right.
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And the numbers were never once anything wrong with it.
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What would you attribute that honesty to?
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Within their own moral system and their own set of rules,
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why weren't people crossing the line
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and shaving off the top and injecting chaos
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into the system to where it would be unpredictable
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and people would be dishonest and greedy
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and all those kinds of things?
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Most people are, but there's certain people
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at the top of the food chain that they don't need that.
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And if they're completely honest,
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then they don't have to think of,
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remember the lie they told.
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And plus they're just honest to start with.
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They're making plenty of money.
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They was making as much money as I did.
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I'll tell you how that came about.
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I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year
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in Medellin, Colombia, and what they were doing,
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they didn't have any organization.
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And if one fellow had 10 kilos
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and he wanted it shipped to New York,
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he would tell his friend and his friend says,
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sure, I'll ship it.
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I have a pilot and I'll ship it up.
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And then he would look in the newspapers,
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oh, 40 kilos was busted in New Jersey.
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I'm so sorry, yours got busted.
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Bang, bang, he's dead.
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So here comes Jorge Ochoa and the three Ochoa brothers
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and Pablo Escobar and Gacho.
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And they decided that we will make an insurance company,
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that we will charge you $10,000
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to take it to your contact in Miami.
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If it gets lost anywhere between the time I put it
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on the airplane or the time you give it to us
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and the time we give it to your man,
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we will replace it in Colombia for you.
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So there was no way anybody could lose.
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And I understand they got a hundred tons piled up
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under that insurance program.
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And I was right there the first day.
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So I had all the work I could do.
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I would land and I said, when do you want me to come back?
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We're waiting on you, Senor.
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Well, let me ask a difficult question.
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Some see Escobar as a brutal murderer
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and some see him as maybe a Robin Hood like figure
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who helped the poor.
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How do you see the man?
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I think he started out to be honest with help the poor.
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And then they had a war down there
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and they blew up and killed his people.
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And the country was divided almost equally three ways.
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They had the military.
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They were just as much into it as anybody.
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And then you had the FARC guerrillas.
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They had about a third of the country.
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And then you had the Contras.
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It was like the white farmers
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and they're the ones that I was dealing with
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and they were at war with one another.
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And so if one of them started killing their people,
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well, I'll kill some of yours too.
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So that's how it happened.
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And then when I heard about Pablo Escobar
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blowing up that airliner
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and killing those women and children,
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I was sorry I ever shook his hand.
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That's brutal murder.
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So you would say Escobar is not a good man?
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Now, looking back on it, when I met him, he was good.
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Did just exactly what he said he would do.
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Could he be a bad man and a man you can trust?
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Are those the things you...
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Absolutely you could trust him, yes.
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So from your perspective, in terms of business,
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he was reliable, he was honest, had integrity.
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You could work with him and he felt safe.
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We flew up to his ranch
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and we brought out motorcycles to start with.
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And can you ride a motorcycle?
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Of course I can ride a motorcycle.
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So I took off across the grass
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and there was a little ditch there
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and the front wheel dropped in that thing
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and I must have slid across that grass 20 feet
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before I got stopped.
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He almost fell off of his bike waiting
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because they knew what it was gonna do.
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And then we got on horses and we went out there
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and pretended to round up some cows
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and he put a Mac 10 machine gun pistol over my shoulder.
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Do you know how to use this?
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Well, I never had, but it was all right.
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I think it was like, okay, you got 10 bodyguards,
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what do you need me for?
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So that's the kind of time we laughed and talked
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and drove some cows over the stumps.
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You said Jorge Ochoa was perhaps the brains
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of the Medellin cartel.
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And why do you say he was the brains?
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Well, he was a gentleman.
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And I suppose he shipped,
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and don't tell me how many more times of cocaine
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Just him and his brothers,
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you could tell by the, they had on each load,
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they was in duffel bags and his big football shaped
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fluffy stuff made with ether.
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And they would have three horns on it
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or a rattlesnake or four Xs on each bag.
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You kind of got to knowing which was which
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and they shipped a lot.
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So, and he was just a gentleman.
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I took the family, we went one weekend to his ranch
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or his palatial place out near Barranquilla
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and oh, he just treated the family.
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His family had, his younger brother made a bull fight
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and we had skiing and little airplanes on floats
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He was really nice and he was really nice.
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How do you make sense of the tension
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that a man could be a gentleman,
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can have integrity, but also be a murderer?
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Well, murder is a stronger word than killing.
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Can you explain the line,
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the gray area we're talking about?
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I mean, I've just talking with Jocko Willing,
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can we talk a lot about killing in the context
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of military conflict in the context of war?
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So there, there's a line between murder and killing
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that you can draw.
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What's the line that you're referring to?
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It's something similar.
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If people are shooting at you
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and you shoot back and kill him,
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that's not murder whatsoever.
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He's trying to get away or out of the situation.
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But if some woman don't pay you
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and you send a hit man over to kill her
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and her children, that's murder.
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Was Jorge involved in those kinds of things?
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I don't think so at all.
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I mean, he was just such a gentleman.
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He had a restaurant before and he was just smart.
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I understand that the first 10 kilos he sold,
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he was sitting on a motorcycle in the sidelines
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in a parking lot and when the DEA come in,
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So he didn't come back to America.
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He was just smart.
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Some people just are savvy.
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And he was such a gentleman.
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And the whole family, the mother and the father,
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the two brothers, their sister,
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I was there when she was kidnapped.
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And finally, he kidnapped our, I guess,
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100 leaders of the FARC and said, all right,
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when she don't come back,
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none of these are gonna come back.
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So they made a deal.
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Is there something you can say about the power structure,
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the hierarchy of the Medellin cartel
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that you interacted with?
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Was it a dictatorship where Pablo ran everything?
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Was there a bunch of power centers?
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Was it like a company where you have CEO, CTO kind of thing?
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And then there's like managers
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and all those kinds of things.
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How did it run from a leadership perspective?
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I understand that about five of them got together
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and made this, I would call it an insurance company.
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And now known as the Medellin Cartel.
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And I didn't see any difference.
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Each one of them had their own business.
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And their people from the jungle or wherever made the cocaine,
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gave it to them and they shipped it.
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And so it didn't seem to be any power play
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between them at all.
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But my main contact was Jorge Ochoa
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and Pablo Escobar was right there.
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And I saw plenty of stuff for him too.
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It's strange that they didn't betray each other regularly.
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You know, greed makes men betray each other.
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How do you explain that?
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How much betrayal did you see?
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I didn't see any, absolutely none.
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If they shipped his 100 kilos, he got paid for it.
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And if the other one shipped his,
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I'm sure they got paid for it.
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How do you explain that?
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Well, there was no need to.
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The money was just unbelievable.
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You think about 500 kilos in the plane
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at $50,000 a kilo at the time.
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And they paid $5,000 to ship it.
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And they made 5,000 without even touching it.
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They just had somebody to load it on through the airplane.
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I gave it to their man in Miami.
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They gave it to whoever it belonged to
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by the marks on the duffel bags.
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So they was making just untold millions.
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But greed can blind men.
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It's still strange to me
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that there was not more betrayal.
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It speaks to something else perhaps
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that's bigger than money.
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But it seems like just like in the casino,
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like you mentioned, we get accustomed
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to whatever level of money we have,
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we get accustomed very quickly.
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And then there's a tension that's natural
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between human beings.
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And when that tension combined with money,
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combined with power,
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combined with, like you mentioned, beautiful women
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and a bit of violence,
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it seems that betrayal should be commonplace.
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It wasn't, not at all.
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Carlos later, I don't know if he betrayed anybody,
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but he started that.
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He was running cocaine through the Bahamas
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I was offered to fly with a DC3 with that,
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but I didn't like it.
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So I had my route through the old wells in Louisiana.
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And so I wasn't gonna change,
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but he talked a lot and I don't know if he betrayed,
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but they didn't like him.
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Yeah, so as you expand,
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there could be tensions that lead to conflict.
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Columbia was, like you said, an ultra violent place.
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How did you survive?
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Who protected you?
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I mean, I was just treated royally.
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All I did, I would come over El Banco.
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There's a radio station at the Forks of the Magdalena River.
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I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the AM.
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And I'd fly in at 10,000 feet
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and I'd see below me there'd be a Cessna.
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And I'd wiggle my wings and he'd wiggle his
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and I'd fall in behind him and we might go 100, 200 miles.
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I'd land on some jungle strip or some banana plantation.
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And they'd fuel me up.
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I could eat steak in the night.
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It was just like treated royally.
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And I mean, take off the next morning whenever I wanted to.
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It was just like that was protected.
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And I was honored guest.
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It wasn't anything like in that movie,
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putting a gun to your head
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and taking your sunglasses and betting.
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So one time I complained to Jorge Ochoa
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that the runway was pretty short that they were using.
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And I went back down and it looked like
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Los Angeles International.
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They had bulldozers in there.
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Had that thing 5,000 feet long.
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Just like, just the next week it was all done.
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The jungle was gone and clay put up there.
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And all the while you were not afraid.
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You were treated like royalty.
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I was afraid when I landed in the United States.
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Well, maybe let's go back to the beginning.
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What was the first time you flew an airplane
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Tell me the story of the first time you smuggled drugs.
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All right, I flew down to Jalapa, Veracruz
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with a Cessna 182.
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And we landed at the town.
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It was a lovely town and just an old town.
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Looked like Bible times.
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People, women were washing your clothes in the streets
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and with stone basins and the stream running through.
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I just was just dumbstruck.
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It was just so pretty.
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And I went in a church and a Catholic church
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and it had the stations of the cross
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all carved magnificent.
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I'd never seen that.
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And I come home and told Mary about that.
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That just almost brought tears to my eyes.
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It was so beautiful.
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And three o clock the next morning
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I went out to the airport and taxied down to the taxiway
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and there was a guard came out
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and wanted to know what I was doing.
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And I pulled out, I was on the fire department
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at Redondo Beach, California.
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So I pulled out my wallet and in it was
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the fire department badge.
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And oh, he shook my hand and was so glad.
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So I taxied on down there and we loaded up
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about 400 pounds in the plane.
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And came on back and I was running to headwinds
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more than I thought and I landed on a little strip.
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You're talking about on the way back?
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On the way back, on the way north
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after we loaded up early in the morning.
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And that's the only time I ever got vertigo.
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The mountains were coming down at a 30, 40 degree angle
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and the Milky Way was overhead.
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And somehow I wanted that airplane
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to be level with the stars.
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And it got me, it's a phenomenal pile of vertigo.
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It's the only time I ever had it was on that load.
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So anyway, the wind was on the nose of that system.
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I wasn't gonna make it to the dry lake where I had fuel.
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So I landed on a little bitty strip
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and there was a little house.
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It was caved in and it was a little boy named Lazarus,
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about six or seven years old.
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And he was herding some goats.
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So we put the marijuana in that house
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and the man stayed with it while I flew into some town
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and got fuel and came back and we sat down
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with the lunch that I brought back
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and little Lazarus sat there and ate with us
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and we had a good time.
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We loaded on back and came on home.
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Oh wow, I wonder where he is now.
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So what was it like to fly,
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maybe describe the details of, do you have to fly low?
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Is there details that are unique to this experience
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of flying an airplane with drugs on it, on board?
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All right, well, one of the mistakes
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that just thousands, hundreds and hundreds
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and thousands of pilots make,
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they don't stop at the border,
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going down and get their permit.
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Once you get a permit to be in Mexico,
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you've got it for six months.
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You can go anywhere, any fishing village,
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any little town, any little place,
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show them this and you're welcome.
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If you don't have that, you go straight to jail.
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So you go down there and you think,
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okay, they're gonna have fuel for me to come back
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Oh, sorry, Senor, that had a rusty leak in it.
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We don't have any.
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Well, you better be able to go to town and get it.
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So that's what I did.
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And when I was coming back for several years,
link |
I would fly up at Mexicali and cross the border
link |
right at Calexico.
link |
I would act like I was landing on the Calexico side
link |
just after dark and then I'd zip across the border
link |
and I'd go over to the Salton Sea
link |
and go below sea level, 100 and something feet,
link |
I believe 170 feet, and come on up
link |
and go out there above Palm Springs
link |
and land at 29 Palms in the desert
link |
and put my stuff under a Joshua tree
link |
and fly into town and get my pickup
link |
and go on back out and get it.
link |
And then it got really dangerous.
link |
They had Operation Starlight, I believe was the name of it.
link |
And they called a lot of pilots coming across the border.
link |
And by that time I was flying bigger planes.
link |
I was flying Beach 18s.
link |
And I would refuel in Mulahe halfway down
link |
on the Baja Peninsula.
link |
And then over in the middle,
link |
20 miles from the nearest road was a goat ranch
link |
where they milked goats and made cheese.
link |
And I would go there and unload the load
link |
coming up out of anywhere in Southern Mexico.
link |
And I would land there and a guy named Juan
link |
would put the marijuana under the trees
link |
and I'd fly into Mulahe and they'd wash my plane
link |
and gas it up and I'd eat a lunch
link |
and rent a room for a few hours and take a nap and a shower
link |
and then go back in the afternoon and fill up.
link |
And then I would go Northwest out of there
link |
and fly 200 miles off the coast of the island of Guadalupe.
link |
And from there I would fly on a more Northwestern heading
link |
about 300 miles out over the Pacific.
link |
And then I would come in behind the Santa Barbara Islands
link |
down low and then I'd come up and go out in the desert land.
link |
And I did that for the rest of their marijuana trips.
link |
What was the hardest part about flying those routes?
link |
The hardest part was getting good in marijuana.
link |
So the hardest part isn't the flying.
link |
No, it's the flying.
link |
It's just like driving your car down.
link |
But then I had people that would bring me on strips
link |
that were just unworthy of an airplane.
link |
Like when I'd land on a highway and in the rainy season,
link |
I would come back to land again
link |
and the guy wouldn't think about it.
link |
And he'd have like little hills on both sides
link |
and the wings were out there.
link |
Well, the grass and the weeds would grow up
link |
and it sounded like, I mean,
link |
it sounded like tearing the airplane apart
link |
when those wings hit.
link |
Mowing the grass down both shoulders of the airplane.
link |
The weeds would grow up high in the tropics.
link |
So some of that stuff was bad.
link |
And oh, getting bad gasoline and telling me
link |
that land here in the night
link |
and knock the wheels off when you land.
link |
Oh, you should have landed a little further up here,
link |
Senor, they ditched down, that sort of thing.
link |
What was it like landing on a highway
link |
and when did you have to land on the highway?
link |
I landed on the highway most of my life, most of the times.
link |
In Mexico, first time I went down,
link |
there was a place called Pichalingi
link |
and it had a 900 foot strip.
link |
And I would fly down and I'd carry gasoline wing with me
link |
and Maury and I would go to the grocery store
link |
and buy all kinds of little goodies and candies
link |
and toys to bring to the children.
link |
And that sand strip in the bend of a river
link |
was just too short to take off with a load.
link |
So there was a young man there named Pedro,
link |
must not weigh much over 100, maybe 120 pounds.
link |
And he'd get in a plane with me
link |
and he'd direct me 20, 30, 40 miles away to a highway.
link |
And the people walk in and the people would pull out
link |
in a two ton truck with a machine gun on it
link |
and a bunch of guys with arms with us
link |
and they'd block the road
link |
and then another one would block it up about a mile away.
link |
And I'd land right over that truck
link |
and they'd load me up and it looked like a bucket brigade
link |
with the marijuana coming.
link |
I'd shake hands with all of them
link |
and I'd take off right over the other trucks.
link |
And sometimes maybe 20, 30, 40 cars lined up.
link |
One time I remember a patrol car, a highway patrol car,
link |
he didn't have his lights on, took off right over him.
link |
And then when I started flying to Louisiana,
link |
the bridge over the Mississippi River,
link |
there were several contractors that went broke
link |
and that thing was out for years.
link |
And about five miles from the river
link |
was flashing red lights and a detour.
link |
And then they swamp on both sides of it
link |
and the middle of it we're growing up with 20 feet trees
link |
and that was like an international runway
link |
from anywhere in the world.
link |
So I landed on that and over and over those red lights
link |
just like the end of a runway.
link |
And then the next morning we'd go out there
link |
and scrub the marks off the highway where I'd landed
link |
Let's go to somebody you've known well,
link |
somebody who's also a drug smuggler is Barry Seal.
link |
Who is Barry Seal?
link |
How did you meet him?
link |
Barry Seal is a friend of mine.
link |
Murray and I and the children went down in Honduras
link |
and we went up Lake Azul, I believe it was,
link |
and we were looking at a ranch to buy.
link |
I was looking for something in Central America
link |
where I'd have a halfway place.
link |
Oh, it was lovely.
link |
We stayed up there for some days and our clothes got muddy
link |
and we went in the river and all kinds of things.
link |
So we got to San Pedro Sula
link |
and we was going back to New Orleans.
link |
So we went to the cleaners to get our clothes
link |
and most all of them was in there.
link |
And they go, oh, Senor, they'll be ready tomorrow morning.
link |
We're not ready now.
link |
Well, the plane leaves at nine o clock or whatever.
link |
So I told Murray for her and the children
link |
to go into the airport because it'd be easier
link |
for one just on a standby flight.
link |
So I went to the laundromat for the clothes
link |
and they were ready and there was a pile of them.
link |
And I put them on my back and got in a taxi
link |
and the old taxi would drive him with it
link |
and I'd give him a hundred dollars to go faster
link |
and he just blew his horn more rapid.
link |
So finally we got to the airport
link |
and I jumped out and ran around on the tarmac
link |
and here's a brand new 727 taxiing out.
link |
So I'm waving to the pilot and he's a young fella.
link |
Then I see Murray's face in the cockpit
link |
and the nose goes down where he puts on brakes
link |
and he laughs and he puts some stairwell out.
link |
And I run for the stairwell and he pulls it back up
link |
and goes like a hitchhiker going to pick you up
link |
Then he put it out and I got on and the whole crowd clapped
link |
and I'm coming home with that load of clothes.
link |
So I go way down in the middle and the plane's full
link |
and Miriam, my daughter, was about nine years old then
link |
and she was sitting in the middle
link |
and by the window was Barry Seal.
link |
Of course I didn't know it.
link |
And I sat in the middle and we took off
link |
and the wheels come up with clunk
link |
and then I got up about 5,000 feet
link |
and we had a little clunk and she said,
link |
what was that, daddy?
link |
And I said, he just turned on his autopilot.
link |
And that fella reached over and I looked at him.
link |
I said, he looks like CIA or FBI, something.
link |
He ain't supposed to be here.
link |
Clear blue eyes, gentleman looking man.
link |
And he said, you fly these things?
link |
I said, I got a few hours, mister.
link |
He said, I'll fly them too or something.
link |
And he said, my name's Barry Seal.
link |
And he reached over Miriam and shook hands
link |
and we got to talking and I thought,
link |
there's no choice of seats on this.
link |
It's just open seating so I don't believe him one bit.
link |
And he started talking about,
link |
he just got out of jail that morning.
link |
Just got out of prison.
link |
And I said, uh huh.
link |
And he told me that he'd been a pilot
link |
with the TWA and this and other.
link |
And told me what he was for.
link |
So we had a nice conversation
link |
for a couple hours to New Orleans.
link |
I didn't believe him.
link |
So he got off in front of us
link |
and what a crowd of people to meet him.
link |
An old mother and a wife and little children
link |
hanging on to him, crying and hugging and kissing him.
link |
I said, he was telling the truth.
link |
So I reached over and gave him a little piece of paper.
link |
I had Murray to write it out with our address.
link |
I said, Barry, I might have some work for you.
link |
What was he in jail for?
link |
He got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine in a small plane.
link |
And so he served a year.
link |
And that was from Colombia?
link |
I don't know where it come from.
link |
He got caught in Honduras, probably refueling.
link |
But he'd been in prison down there before
link |
for bringing explosives to the Cuban Contras.
link |
And he lost his job with the airlines.
link |
And then later on, I found out he was ex CIA
link |
and George Bush Sr.'s protege
link |
and had a thousand parachute jumps and was there.
link |
He was a hot shot model.
link |
There's a million questions I wanna ask here.
link |
But maybe can we linger on a little bit longer?
link |
What was your relationship with him like?
link |
You were a drug smuggler.
link |
He's a drug smuggler.
link |
Your friends, how often do you guys talk?
link |
How often do you work together?
link |
What was the relationship like?
link |
Well, I'll back up and finish where I started off there.
link |
I gave him the things, Barry,
link |
I may have some work for you.
link |
I know I got some work for you.
link |
And I said, come out to Santa Barbara.
link |
And so I don't know, a week or two later,
link |
he flew out and went to our house
link |
and stayed with us a couple of days.
link |
And I had a almost brand new Aero Commander 690B.
link |
That thing with turbo prop and it was hot.
link |
It was the hottest thing I'd ever had.
link |
So I said, let's go Barry, let's see what you can do.
link |
So I'm sorry I said that.
link |
We got about 10,000 feet.
link |
And he was like one of them blue angel pilots.
link |
He rung that thing out.
link |
And I said, that's enough.
link |
And then he did a falling leaf.
link |
That's where you cut the engines
link |
and the plane falls from side to side.
link |
And I saw Bob Hoover do that in the air show once.
link |
And that's the only person I ever saw do it.
link |
And I was, my hands was white knuckle hanging onto the seat.
link |
You shut off the engine?
link |
Yeah, he shut off the engines
link |
and landed flying side by side like this.
link |
How do you explain that?
link |
Was he just a wild man
link |
or was he sufficiently skilled to work?
link |
He was sufficiently skilled.
link |
He knew what he was doing.
link |
I can get a plane from one spot to another
link |
and I guess I'm known as a good pilot,
link |
but that guy, it was an aerobatic.
link |
So anyway, he stayed with us a couple of days.
link |
And then I told him, I said, this plane needs tanking.
link |
And I said, I got some work down in Columbia.
link |
It needs to come back to Louisiana.
link |
And I need 2,500 mile range.
link |
He said, I got somebody in Mena, Arkansas
link |
to do that and keep their mouth shut.
link |
So I gave him $10,000 and he flew away.
link |
And in a few days he called me and says,
link |
come to my house in Baton Rouge.
link |
So I went out to his house in Baton Rouge
link |
and I stayed with him for a few days.
link |
And that plane was tanked.
link |
I mean, beautiful from stem to stern.
link |
I could went from Bolivia to Canada with it.
link |
So then I hired him to fly.
link |
I paid him a million dollars a trip.
link |
I paid him $2,000 a kilo, so about a million dollar trip.
link |
And I didn't get paid until the people received it.
link |
They had to ship it to Chicago and New York
link |
and then the money come back.
link |
So it was a couple of two or three weeks pipeline.
link |
Well, I always had to pay him before he'd go again.
link |
I mean, and he barely ache.
link |
I mean, he had moaning room.
link |
So one time I gave him a million dollars
link |
and I put it in a box real nice.
link |
So how big is a box that contains a million dollars?
link |
So we're talking about a hundred dollar bills?
link |
A hundred dollar bill, it's not very big.
link |
You can put it in a large briefcase.
link |
It weighs exactly 10 kilos.
link |
Each bill weighs a gram, so you can weigh your money
link |
and almost get it exactly right.
link |
20 something pounds is a million dollars.
link |
A hundred dollar bills.
link |
But in one dollar bills, it's one ton, 2,200 pounds.
link |
We didn't even accept them.
link |
Were you the one that introduced Barry Seal
link |
No, I didn't introduce him at all.
link |
And our deal was that you don't meet my people.
link |
I mean, we just kind of crossed your working for me
link |
to fly the airplanes.
link |
So he wanted these Panther conversions
link |
that cost $400,000 each with a storm scope and radar.
link |
I bought anything you want.
link |
What's that mean, sorry to interrupt,
link |
Panther conversions?
link |
Panther conversion was, these people called Panther,
link |
they took everything out from the firewall,
link |
the instruments and all and converted them
link |
and put Q tip propellers on them full bladed
link |
and you very quiet and the CIA developed those
link |
in Southeast Asia for running behind the lines.
link |
And that's where Barry had flown those things
link |
so he knew about them.
link |
So that's what he wanted and that's what we got him.
link |
How does that connect to Pablo?
link |
And so he worked for you and you got those upgrades.
link |
I think he flew about 30 loads for me
link |
and then I got arrested and was for everything in the world.
link |
Got 35 years sentence.
link |
But let me back up a little bit.
link |
Barry was our friend.
link |
Mari and I are both friends.
link |
We should pause real quick and say Mari is your wife
link |
and hopefully we'll convince her to join us in a little bit.
link |
She's the love of your life and sort of she weaves in
link |
and out of many of these stories that you tell.
link |
Yes, she was there.
link |
She was behind the scenes.
link |
But I kept her out of it completely.
link |
And then also you mentioned Mariam as your daughter.
link |
Yes, our son was a baby.
link |
And I remember we went out to a festival,
link |
was my favorite restaurant in Carl Gables.
link |
Oh God, it was good.
link |
And Barry knew about it.
link |
Anyhow, we went out to dinner
link |
and so we came back and there was no rooms.
link |
So Barry will spend the night with us.
link |
So he goes to our hotel room with us
link |
and we got two big beds in the Omni Hotel
link |
and he lays over there and he gets down
link |
to his stripy undershorts and his T shirt
link |
and he puts the baby up on his belly
link |
and gives him the bottle and said,
link |
mm, ain't that good, Red?
link |
And he just feeds the baby.
link |
We laugh and talk and that's how close we were
link |
that we could all stay in a hotel room together.
link |
And would you say he's a good man?
link |
Oh, wonderful man.
link |
A gentleman, Southern gentleman.
link |
Just looked after his mother, his family,
link |
everybody around him, everybody loved Barry.
link |
He just had a little smile on his face always.
link |
So you got arrested and then what happened to Barry?
link |
Well, Barry knew the people that unloaded.
link |
Of course he sent the cars down and all that.
link |
So he met the unloader, a guy named Lito,
link |
Luis Carlos Bustamante of Venezuelan.
link |
So he just kept on flying.
link |
But he, I believe he had three of my airplanes
link |
at $400,000 a piece and they owed me some money.
link |
Well, he collected a lot of that and gave Marie the money
link |
and put it in his safe and took her to his house
link |
and all after I got arrested and sent a lawyer in.
link |
He got me the best lawyer in the country, Albert Krieger.
link |
He was head of the defense team for all of America.
link |
Can you tell the story of the months
link |
that led up to Barry's assassination?
link |
What did you know, what did you sense, what did you think?
link |
Okay, when I got out of prison, I hadn't been out long.
link |
I was eating breakfast and there was Ronald Reagan's face
link |
right in the television.
link |
We have absolute proof that the communist
link |
Sandinista government is in the cocaine running business.
link |
And there was that fat lady, the C126 on the runway
link |
with the belly down and I thought, oh God, he had done it.
link |
So I had heard that Barry might've been working with him.
link |
So it wasn't long before.
link |
With the DEA or whoever, he was no longer on our side.
link |
So can you clarify how you got that
link |
from the Reagan making a statement about we've heard.
link |
Okay, there was his plane.
link |
There was Barry's plane and okay, on the way north,
link |
we could stop in Nicaragua and land on a military base
link |
or on a base that they used as crop dusters and all
link |
and refuel and so that shortened our trip.
link |
We'd go further into the jungle and come up
link |
and that was what Pablo Escobar and Ochoa and them
link |
and they was associates with the people in Nicaragua.
link |
So Barry was, if that plane was there,
link |
that means Barry was feeding the DEA information.
link |
He was working with them at that time.
link |
But let me back up a little bit.
link |
When I was flying and I told Barry,
link |
we would refuel in Trange Airplane,
link |
the loads in Belize where I had a spot up there
link |
and then that's when they told me
link |
we can refuel in Nicaragua and then you fly all the way
link |
and Barry couldn't believe it.
link |
He says, all right, but I wanted you to land.
link |
I had a place in Louisiana for $10,000
link |
that I could unload and the sheriff and all them was paid off.
link |
And he said, no, no, no.
link |
I can't get caught in Meena, Arkansas.
link |
I said, what do you mean you can't get caught
link |
in Meena, Arkansas?
link |
You get caught anywhere.
link |
He said, I can't, but it's gonna cost you $50,000
link |
every time my wheels touch the ground.
link |
Why, can you explain why he can't get caught
link |
in Meena, Arkansas?
link |
He said he was hooked up with him at the very top
link |
and he even said, I'm gonna have dinner
link |
with the governor tonight.
link |
That's at that time.
link |
And it's like, did Bill Clinton,
link |
did you give him any money?
link |
And I said, no, I never gave the man any money,
link |
but it was like the money that I had
link |
that went to Grand Cayman Islands
link |
and I told my lawyer, I said, I never touched that money.
link |
He said, you don't have to fondle it to be guilty.
link |
So what, I mean, there's a lot of conspiracy theories
link |
around the relationship between Barry Seal and the Clintons.
link |
What evidence do we have?
link |
What would you say from your best understanding
link |
of what was the relationship
link |
between Bill Clinton and Barry Seal?
link |
Barry said, and he knew that he couldn't get caught
link |
in Meena, Arkansas.
link |
And when that movie was gonna come out,
link |
be called Meena, somebody stopped it.
link |
I mean, they stopped it dead in the tracks
link |
for two or three years and the producer even quit.
link |
You mean the American Made with Tom Cruise movie?
link |
It wasn't American.
link |
It was gonna be called Meena?
link |
It's the name that was written and produced in Meena.
link |
And waiting on Hillary to be elected,
link |
they would not let that movie out.
link |
And that movie was changed drastically.
link |
But to push back on that,
link |
that doesn't mean there's truth there.
link |
That means they were worried about
link |
the power of the conspiracy theory, which stuck.
link |
I mean, you know, some conspiracy theories,
link |
just because they're popular doesn't mean they're true.
link |
And ones that, but it also doesn't mean they're not true.
link |
And there's ones that are not very popular
link |
that could be true.
link |
But that one really stuck.
link |
I mean, what's your sense?
link |
Well, I paid one and a half million dollars
link |
for Barry to land at Meena, Arkansas.
link |
So I was pretty well assured that he couldn't get caught.
link |
And I said, well, I can't get caught in Columbia.
link |
We can't get caught in Nicaragua.
link |
I guess we got a license.
link |
So we went for it.
link |
Oh, so when you say I can't get caught,
link |
just to clarify, there's a sense
link |
where this is a safe place to land.
link |
Yes, like completely safe.
link |
So you don't think he was referring
link |
to some kind of, you know,
link |
like my grandfather who fought in World War II
link |
would talk about bullets can't hit him.
link |
So it's almost like believing.
link |
He was taking that $50,000 and giving it to somebody.
link |
And Barry was honest.
link |
So he wasn't just taking it from me
link |
because he was making a million dollars.
link |
He didn't care for the $50,000.
link |
Oh man, taking the story forward,
link |
the months leading up to his assassination,
link |
what would you understand why he was assassinated?
link |
Who were the players involved?
link |
Maybe could you have stopped it?
link |
Well, I'll tell you, after I saw Reagan's face
link |
on the television saying we have the absolute proof,
link |
the phone rang and it was Barry.
link |
I hadn't heard from him in a couple of years.
link |
He said, I'm coming out tonight, Roger.
link |
So he came out and he said,
link |
I'll meet you in this French restaurant.
link |
I don't even know it in Santa Barbara.
link |
And I walked in, there's about 20 or 30 people in there.
link |
And they was all 30, 40 years old,
link |
women with plastic or leather skirts
link |
and me in the blue jeans.
link |
And I looked around and Barry was at the back.
link |
He was leaned up, he had gained weight.
link |
And I walked up and I said, Barry, you wired.
link |
I said, well, I'm not gonna talk to these DE agents.
link |
He said, every one of them.
link |
Oh, with jeans and skirts, I like it.
link |
I said, well, Barry, I'm gonna set you
link |
and you just talk to me, buddy,
link |
and tell me what's on your mind.
link |
And he sat there and he just went to talking.
link |
And he told me about, he was left holding a bag.
link |
What do you mean by that?
link |
Like that nobody's supported him?
link |
Well, I think it's something or another.
link |
He was, and I don't know this.
link |
I mean, this is just what happened, putting it all together.
link |
He had some CIA buddies that was pretending
link |
we're going to supply all of our Northwood arms.
link |
And with that, you can land cocaine back here by the ton.
link |
So he's taking his little planes and putting some AK 47s
link |
and maybe ammunition or whatever,
link |
and takes it down to the Contras
link |
against the Communist Party of Nicaragua,
link |
where we've been landing.
link |
And Oliver North was involved in this.
link |
So when all that, and so his CIA buddies
link |
was certainly involved, and we know they were.
link |
And Barry had been in the CIA earlier
link |
when he first got out of school.
link |
So when, as I say, the shit hit the fan,
link |
they all fled and left Barry holding the bag.
link |
The CIA and the DEA.
link |
Yeah, not the DEA, the CIA.
link |
The DEA wasn't in on it.
link |
The CIA was selling that cocaine, bringing it in.
link |
Just to clarify, what's Iran Contra scandal?
link |
What was the alleged involvement of the CIA
link |
in using drug trade to fund things?
link |
What do you think is true?
link |
What should we know?
link |
Well, I know what I knew was true,
link |
that Barry was taking a small amount of arms
link |
back to Central America and giving them to
link |
whoever Oliver North group were.
link |
Who's Oliver North?
link |
Oliver North was a colonel that got implemented
link |
and almost brought the government down.
link |
And so they said, all right,
link |
we're getting the guns from Iran
link |
and we're taking cocaine to pay for them.
link |
And since Congress won't give us money to fight this war,
link |
we're gonna circumvent it.
link |
So that was a whole thing.
link |
So it was a CIA's effort to circumvent
link |
the funding mechanisms of government by selling drugs.
link |
Yes, but it was a handful of renegade CIA agents
link |
that were Barry's friends that was making a load,
link |
a load of money, tons of it come up.
link |
If you would like to read the book,
link |
The Big White Lie, The CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic,
link |
the CIA put, according to this,
link |
the book and Michael Levine,
link |
I didn't remember his name last time I talked,
link |
wrote that book and he was a head CIA agent,
link |
he was a head DEA agent that exposed this.
link |
And the CIA tried to kill him.
link |
And he says, they put crack cocaine, they developed,
link |
their chemists developed crack.
link |
And they put it in every city in the United States
link |
So they were bringing it up by the tons
link |
and that's for sure.
link |
And Barry was bringing it.
link |
Can I ask you a small tangent question?
link |
Do you think the public should trust the CIA and the DEA?
link |
Do you think they're mostly good people
link |
that are carrying out a good mission?
link |
Because this kind of makes it sound
link |
like there's renegade agents that are just doing
link |
whatever the hell they want
link |
and with sometimes no regard for human life.
link |
Well, that's certainly true.
link |
But that's not everybody in there.
link |
That's just, sometimes you get a few policemen
link |
in the department that do these things.
link |
I don't believe, I believe that our government is good.
link |
I think we've got some fools running it.
link |
I don't know how we get them there,
link |
but I don't think I know.
link |
Okay, so what was Barry's involvement here?
link |
So Barry leaned back in that chair
link |
and he told me that he got caught with one and a half tons
link |
and he bellied it in the runway in Nicaragua
link |
and had cameras flashing inside and out.
link |
And he flew it back to Homestead with an agent there
link |
and he brought the agent over, Jake Jacobson.
link |
Really nice fellow, I think he was a crop duster.
link |
And we'd have got along if we'd have been on the right side.
link |
And so we sat there and drank Chevy's Regal
link |
until I got pie eyed and Barry told me about it.
link |
He said that he went to see Edwin Meese.
link |
He flew his, he got out on bail
link |
and he flew his Lear jet up to Washington
link |
and went in to see the Attorney General, Edwin Meese.
link |
And they run him out of the office.
link |
The next day he went back and said,
link |
I have absolute proof that the CIA
link |
is bringing tons of cocaine
link |
or they're running tons of cocaine into the United States.
link |
And Edwin Meese put him up with this agent Jacobson.
link |
And they went down and got one and a half tons.
link |
And on the way back, they bellied it in
link |
and Pablo Escobar and some of the other ones
link |
on general there in Nicaragua,
link |
you can see them toting it from one plane to the other
link |
in the book called The Big Kings of Cocaine.
link |
It's got a mention of me too.
link |
And also the other one has a mention of me in it.
link |
Said I'm in more files for the DEA than Noriega.
link |
So who was wanting to get rid of Barry?
link |
Is that, who wanted to get rid of Barry more?
link |
The cartels or the CIA?
link |
But so Barry leaned back and he told me the story.
link |
And the tears came down between his fingers
link |
as he put his hands over his eyes.
link |
And he said, I just couldn't do it, Roger.
link |
I just couldn't do three life sentences.
link |
So I've told him everything.
link |
I went to Congress and I've testified before Congress.
link |
He testified before Congress
link |
for all these things that he had done.
link |
And he said, I told him all about you,
link |
but you're under my umbrella.
link |
You got to testify with me before grand jury in Miami.
link |
And so the guy said, you can come down,
link |
the DEA said you can come down tomorrow with Mari,
link |
first class, or I'll take you down in chains.
link |
And if you don't testify with Barry,
link |
the only place you'll ever see your wife and family again
link |
is in a federal prison visiting room.
link |
Was that a difficult conversation?
link |
Oh, my guts was just like ice water.
link |
I can't testify against my friends.
link |
I just can't do it.
link |
How am I going to do it?
link |
I just, I can't work with people.
link |
And he was honest with me.
link |
How am I going to testify against them?
link |
I can't spend the rest of my life in a federal prison.
link |
What on earth, what a mess, Barry, you've got me into.
link |
Is that a kind of betrayal there?
link |
Yes, but it's still, I wish he left me out of it.
link |
I understand him getting in such a mess that he told,
link |
because if the CIA and whoever else was behind him
link |
betrayed him, then he's going to tell everything.
link |
So I says, all right, I'll be in Miami.
link |
So Mari and I flew down first class.
link |
And I went to a lawyer,
link |
one of the biggest lawyers in Miami.
link |
And I said, man, I am in a mess.
link |
This fellow's told everything and I've got to say something,
link |
but I'm not a snitch, man.
link |
I mean, what can I do?
link |
And he said, well, being a snitch is like being pregnant.
link |
You either are or you're not.
link |
And he says, I don't represent snitches,
link |
but if you want to fight this case,
link |
I'll do it for $600,000.
link |
And boy, my face turned red.
link |
Well, I'm not a snitch.
link |
He said, well, that's what you're talking about.
link |
He said, let me tell you something.
link |
If you go in there and say one thing and sign that paper
link |
and you don't tell them everything you know,
link |
then they will convict you of everything you've ever done
link |
and you tell them.
link |
So you can't do it.
link |
So I said, Barry, I'm having trouble with a lawyer.
link |
Give it, I'll go to Mari, let's go.
link |
He said, all right, use my lawyer.
link |
And he gave me his card, the lawyer's card.
link |
So Mari and I went to the festival restaurant that night
link |
and Barry and Debbie came in.
link |
She was dressed pretty and Barry wasn't.
link |
So we was already about finished.
link |
So we had dessert together.
link |
And I said, Barry, they're going to kill you, friend.
link |
He said, no, they ain't going to kill me.
link |
So and so, such and such is gone.
link |
And this and the other.
link |
I said, Barry, they're going to kill you, man.
link |
You can't deny it.
link |
And I said, I didn't tell him I wasn't going to testify.
link |
So I hugged his neck.
link |
I really, like, and we fled to Brazil.
link |
But I took Mari and the children and went to Brazil.
link |
So you decided there you're not going to stay.
link |
I knew, I didn't know what I could do.
link |
I talked to a lawyer.
link |
I mean, I just didn't, I didn't know what I could do,
link |
but the best in Miami said what he told me.
link |
And you went to Brazil.
link |
We went to Brazil.
link |
Did you have a conversation with anybody at the cartel?
link |
I mean, that's such an interesting moment
link |
that tests the man's character to not snitch.
link |
And did you have a conversation with anybody?
link |
No. Pablo with, about it.
link |
So it's just understood.
link |
I just didn't, couldn't do it.
link |
But how many men like you are there?
link |
I had all my friends testified against me.
link |
I had 11 friends and every one of them put their finger up.
link |
And I was facing life,
link |
continuing criminal enterprise care.
link |
And still you couldn't do it.
link |
I just couldn't do it.
link |
Did you ever get respect from the cartels for that,
link |
from the people in the cartel?
link |
Oh, there was a whole time I got back and stuff.
link |
They owe me money and I can't get it.
link |
Well, that's about money.
link |
I just mean about human beings.
link |
I mean, I've been back down there and I've been welcomed.
link |
I have my contact.
link |
And when I was in Brazil,
link |
I was trying to get this money.
link |
They owe me three and a half million dollars.
link |
So I called up there and he was going to pay me.
link |
Oh, I got 600,000 today and I'll get you some more tomorrow.
link |
And then the next week I called,
link |
hey, hey, got great news, great news.
link |
Barry Seale has been killed.
link |
And I went back to the hotel.
link |
We was up in the northern part of Brazil
link |
and where was it, Marty?
link |
It's been quite a job.
link |
And so I went back and I told Mary and Miriam
link |
and they cried and I cried.
link |
How is that great news from the cartel perspective?
link |
Well, now there's no case against me and him and them.
link |
Do you know who killed them?
link |
I'll tell you about that story.
link |
On the first load I did,
link |
I landed at a banana plantation and it was raining
link |
and it was a muddy strip, clay.
link |
And they put the 300 kilos of cocaine
link |
and then the ugliest man you could imagine,
link |
named Ronaldo got in there with a Mac 10
link |
and he was making sure I took it to Louisiana.
link |
This is many years before.
link |
Yeah, a couple of years before.
link |
we took off and the mud got up in the wheel well
link |
so thick until the wheels wouldn't come up.
link |
Well, I'm going 200 miles an hour
link |
instead of 300 miles an hour with wheels coming down.
link |
Well, I can't go back there.
link |
If I do, I'm gonna be in the same situation
link |
until the sun dries it out in a few days.
link |
And so, but in Belize, I had a runway
link |
that had been used for $10,000 used to refuel.
link |
So I told the guy, listen,
link |
we got to land in Belize to refuel.
link |
No, no, no, we put the Mac 10 and I'll shoot you.
link |
Go ahead, fool, you're gonna die too.
link |
So it was in a term.
link |
He wasn't just ugly, he was also angry.
link |
He was a bad, bad killer.
link |
And so he's the one to actually kill Barry.
link |
The one that went up on the first load with me.
link |
And Ronaldo, and he's doing life.
link |
He's just a killer.
link |
Yeah, he's doing life in Louisiana.
link |
I wonder who, is it known who made that decision?
link |
The younger Ochoa brother, I understand, Fabio,
link |
which one paid for the hit.
link |
I don't know that, but that's what I've heard
link |
and it probably sounds about right.
link |
He's done in Jessup, Georgia, doing a long, long time.
link |
I think he's about to get out.
link |
He's been in 30 years or whatever.
link |
The movie American Made.
link |
What do you think that movie got right?
link |
What did it get wrong?
link |
Almost everything wrong.
link |
It was disgustingly wrong.
link |
Okay, which parts?
link |
Can you maybe elaborate?
link |
It's about Barry Seal and it just didn't even,
link |
it was nothing, whoever wrote it had no idea
link |
who Barry Seal was.
link |
They sat in a rocking chair and just tried to think of
link |
what was some baby bashing drug dealer doing.
link |
And it's just like, God, you just don't have any idea
link |
of the spirit of the man.
link |
So they wanted just to try to tell a fun story
link |
without actually studying the story.
link |
They didn't know him, they just had no idea.
link |
And Barry was such a nice person,
link |
such a really nice gentleman person.
link |
They talked to you or no?
link |
The people that made the movie.
link |
And I see all these people telling Barry never met him.
link |
They telling all about him.
link |
I think that's just ridiculous.
link |
And for one thing, for his character coming out
link |
of warehouses and all that, that was just like ugly.
link |
And then down in Columbia, putting a gun to his head,
link |
going to take his sunglasses and then he put $25,000
link |
million worth of cocaine on his plane.
link |
And then they're going to bet $100
link |
he don't have enough room to take off.
link |
That's just insane.
link |
I mean, just the whole thing.
link |
And then he's talking to the DEA agents when he's coming up.
link |
You don't know what frequency they own,
link |
how he's got five planes and they all split
link |
when the DEA comes out.
link |
These are just somebody just fantasy.
link |
But those are like, those are details of the man,
link |
details of the story.
link |
Is there some big profound things they missed
link |
about just this whole period?
link |
But that's something that's really important to you
link |
Yes, they just tried to sensationalize
link |
on little things that people remember.
link |
And it's just not true.
link |
It was just like a business deal and good people
link |
and good airplanes and good flying.
link |
And it was like a good watch that was made.
link |
It just clicked and it just went on.
link |
And they missed all of that.
link |
They tried to make it sound like it's something very ugly.
link |
Do you think it was a story
link |
that could have been told way better
link |
and still be a hell of a good story?
link |
Oh my goodness, yes.
link |
Well, there's a series called Chernobyl done by HBO.
link |
And because I have sort of family connected to that period,
link |
they did an incredible job of being historically accurate
link |
and only not being historically accurate
link |
when it helped the story, only in those rare cases.
link |
When they on purpose left the story
link |
to make it easier for people to understand.
link |
But it was still somehow accurate.
link |
And even though all the actors were British actors
link |
speaking English with a British accent,
link |
it was still somehow accurate.
link |
Like they captured the spirit.
link |
So it was historically accurate
link |
and the spirit was captured.
link |
That was one of the most incredible like series
link |
It convinced me that the movie was made by non Russians.
link |
It convinced me that if you really care about a story,
link |
you don't have to have been brought up in it.
link |
You don't even need to speak the language.
link |
If you're truly a scholar of it,
link |
if you talk to a lot of people, if you learn,
link |
if you just pour your heart and soul into it,
link |
you can create something really special.
link |
And so your son says you could do that with the story
link |
with this period of time.
link |
Oh yes, it was a story that needs to be told.
link |
It need to be told in the correct way.
link |
Not like we're trying to bash a certain angle.
link |
Well, if Netflix or HBO are watching this,
link |
you need to tell the story of Roger Rees, in my opinion.
link |
This is a young picture of you.
link |
Yeah. There you go.
link |
That's from National Geographic.
link |
Jorge Archoa, Pablo Escobar, it's you, Roger and Barry.
link |
And the Muggler, a memoir.
link |
Yeah, I really do hope that they make a movie of this one.
link |
There's a movie called Blow that tells the story
link |
of George Young, Boston George.
link |
Did you know George Young?
link |
That's one way to ask it.
link |
The other is what do you think of the movie Blow?
link |
I didn't know George Young, but it was a wonderful movie.
link |
That's the way it should be.
link |
So he was a little bit before your time?
link |
Exactly the same time.
link |
Exactly the same time.
link |
He was using stewardesses to fly the marijuana
link |
out of Manhattan Beach,
link |
and I was on the fire department in Redondo Beach,
link |
10 miles away, flying it up, sending it back.
link |
Somebody was sending it back.
link |
He might've been sending it back,
link |
but he didn't have near the excitement that I did.
link |
I was shot down twice.
link |
I escaped from five different prisons.
link |
I was tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison.
link |
So he didn't have all that fun that I had.
link |
Yeah, so yours is a heck of a fun adventure.
link |
Just to linger on a little bit.
link |
So Johnny Depp plays George,
link |
and Ray Liotta plays his father,
link |
and there's this son father kind of scene at the end.
link |
It's heartbreaking.
link |
Like that scene paints a picture of a life
link |
that could have been had if none of this wild drug
link |
smuggling happened.
link |
I don't usually, I mean, I don't, I'm almost,
link |
I really never get like teary eyed in a movie,
link |
It's almost like confronting at the end of your life
link |
what your life could have been with your father,
link |
the way he calls him Georgie.
link |
It, like you fucked up, Georgie.
link |
I really, really did.
link |
Mario waited for me all those years
link |
and the children raised them without me,
link |
visiting me in prisons all over the world.
link |
It's unbelievable.
link |
It's just, nothing's worth that kind of money.
link |
Can you tell the story of when you were tortured
link |
nearly to death in a Mexican prison?
link |
I sure can and I'm smiling,
link |
but it was nothing to smile about, I can tell you.
link |
I was in a pool and a gentleman came over
link |
and shook hands with me and put handcuffs on me.
link |
And I thought, what in the world?
link |
That was at one of the nice hotels.
link |
They put me in a jail cell and I sat there
link |
and all the drunks and thieves and stuff kept coming in
link |
and they had a bucket and it overrun.
link |
And I said, I remember like 18 people in a room
link |
about 12 foot square.
link |
Oh, it was hot and I thought,
link |
somebody's gotta come get me, this ain't real.
link |
I hadn't done anything.
link |
It's like, it was a pilot come to see me up in Hermosillo
link |
and he stopped and he made a mistake
link |
and went to the International Runway
link |
instead of where he was supposed to go.
link |
And he had my phony name in his pocket, so they got me.
link |
So they said I was a drug smuggler.
link |
So after about three days, they put me back into the back
link |
and it was a torture place.
link |
And they put me in a little cell like,
link |
I guess it wasn't hard even, it wasn't six feet,
link |
must've been about five feet square and about 12 feet high.
link |
And it was June, the end of June, and it was hot.
link |
And they left me in there for, I guess a few days.
link |
You didn't know, so every once in a while
link |
they'd come drag me out and first off,
link |
they put my head under water
link |
and it had seltzer in it or some kind.
link |
And I took one whiff of that and three or four of them
link |
couldn't hold me down.
link |
So then I learned that just before you have to breathe,
link |
tear loose like that and they'll let you up.
link |
And that was the first treatment.
link |
And then they started beating me.
link |
And they beat me with a blackjack and rubber hose
link |
until I was black and blue and yellow
link |
from the bottom of my feet to my head.
link |
What did they want from you?
link |
They wanted me to sign a confession
link |
that I was a drug smuggler.
link |
And they put the papers under your nose.
link |
This is all over if you'll sign.
link |
Well, I knew if you signed, you got six years.
link |
I wasn't gonna sign, I wasn't gonna sign.
link |
But they didn't want you to snitch on anybody.
link |
They just wanted you to say.
link |
No, they just wanted me to sign that paper.
link |
And you still didn't.
link |
I didn't even bow to it.
link |
I ain't a beat and ate that bad.
link |
So anyhow, it just got them into the good part.
link |
So then they come and they take me out,
link |
I'm bug naked and they bend me over
link |
and they have things to pull you,
link |
like chains click, click, click, click, click.
link |
And they bent me over and they put butter
link |
on my bum and they commenced to put hot chili pepper
link |
up there and that stuff was bad.
link |
I mean, it was red hot and that was, that was awful.
link |
That was just awful.
link |
Yeah, but still you didn't.
link |
I didn't think about it.
link |
I ain't going to, I guess if I'd have known
link |
he was gonna kill me, I wouldn't have done it.
link |
But I wasn't about, you get hurt bad enough
link |
you'll pass out, so I didn't pass out.
link |
So I was all right.
link |
So then the last thing they did was
link |
they brought a dead man in there and he was wrapped.
link |
He was wrapped in newspaper, little strips
link |
about a half inch wide, just like a mummy.
link |
And he was frozen and they hung him on the wall
link |
with a meat hook and you next son of a bitch, you next.
link |
And so he's sitting there like this
link |
and as he starts to throw out, which is pretty quick,
link |
it looks like he's crying and it looks like he's peeing
link |
and the paper starts unraveling on him
link |
and the formaldehyde puddles on the floor.
link |
Ooh, what a smell that rotten insides
link |
and the formaldehyde and there was a little space.
link |
It wasn't even a half inch high under the door.
link |
And I lay on that filthy floor with my cheek
link |
and put my lips right up under that door
link |
and we're sucking that fresh air.
link |
And I went to sleep after some time.
link |
And I know where Walt Disney gets his ideas.
link |
I saw white pink pigs with wings on them,
link |
all kinds of stuff flying around.
link |
So when I woke up, I didn't know which was real
link |
and which was the nightmare.
link |
It took me a minute to figure out where I was
link |
and what was going on.
link |
How did you stay mentally strong through that time?
link |
I don't know that I did.
link |
I was, yeah, I was mentally strong.
link |
So I was just like I am now.
link |
I mean, you could be that man that could have killed you.
link |
Yes, I could have.
link |
So what gave you hope?
link |
Did you have hope?
link |
Or you were just a stubborn son of a bitch?
link |
I think some of both of it.
link |
And I think they aren't going to keep you here forever.
link |
You know, you're going to get out into the prison
link |
or they're going to let you go or something.
link |
If you sign that paper, you ain't going nowhere.
link |
And I want to go home.
link |
I got shot down a few weeks before that.
link |
I got shot from out of the sky.
link |
80 bullet holes through the plane,
link |
killed a fellow on the ground,
link |
shot the leg nearly off the man in the plane.
link |
In that little place of Peachy Lingy.
link |
You want to tell you that story?
link |
And they were shooting you from the ground.
link |
A little 900 foot strip there at Peachy Lingy,
link |
a poor, poor village with starving donkeys.
link |
And that's where they'd,
link |
I'd give them $17,000 for the load.
link |
And I'd go over on the highway and load.
link |
Well, on day 13, I did a load every day for 13 days.
link |
They had a bunch of marijuana, pretty good piled up.
link |
And I was going low today.
link |
And on day 13, I had that little warning sign
link |
going off in my stomach.
link |
Uh oh, uh oh, don't do it.
link |
But I asked this Joaquin,
link |
oh, we had the federal, all this paid off,
link |
So I spent the night in a hammock
link |
and walked down to the airplane,
link |
just as it get in daylight.
link |
And 10 or 12 men walked with me and Pedro got in.
link |
I brushed my teeth in the little stream.
link |
It was about foot deep,
link |
a little river coming through there.
link |
And got in the airplane and I fired her up.
link |
And bam, I thought a tire blew out.
link |
I looked over and it still ain't dawned on me.
link |
And Pedro was yelling, police here, police here Roger,
link |
Well, it dawned on me.
link |
And I shoved it, the throttle to the firewall.
link |
And I only had about.
link |
So that was a bullet.
link |
Yeah, somebody, there's officer sides, they'd shot.
link |
They'd shot just a warning, like get out, stop.
link |
We're gonna rob you, whatever it is.
link |
That's what they do.
link |
They just taking the plane and me
link |
and put me in prison, old thing.
link |
So, but I, even though I had papers.
link |
So I just shoved it to the firewall
link |
and there wasn't enough room to take off on that strip.
link |
And there's half of it was behind me
link |
or some of it was behind me.
link |
And so just at the end, I'm just like,
link |
I think that thing stalls at about 50 miles an hour.
link |
Just turning 50 and I just pulled it right up
link |
and put the flaps on.
link |
And as I pulled off the ground,
link |
they opened up on both sides of me with machine guns
link |
and they riddled that airplane.
link |
I mean, the windshield came out.
link |
I got hit three times.
link |
You, like your body?
link |
And I didn't know I was hit.
link |
I mean, it was just the gasoline just pouring in.
link |
The world turned yellow.
link |
I must've went into shock.
link |
So it just stopped in slow motion.
link |
And one bullet hit the strut right by my head.
link |
And it just, parts of that bullet just went all over me.
link |
I just looked like I'd been peppered with lead.
link |
And the gasoline was just pouring in.
link |
I mean, just pouring in where they'd shot the wing up above
link |
and the windshield's gone.
link |
I mean, it was just like a hail storm.
link |
Airplanes did stall or no?
link |
I was in a stall anyway, and I didn't realize it.
link |
And I guess you wouldn't unless you trained for it.
link |
But when you're in a stall,
link |
the elevator is kind of flappy.
link |
And I didn't realize it at the time.
link |
I thought they had shot the elevator cable in too.
link |
So I thought, oh God.
link |
So I just reached over and switched it off,
link |
switched the mixture, pulled everything.
link |
And in the river, there was rocks
link |
about as big as this table.
link |
And they were like the turtle back
link |
all the way up until there was a waterfall.
link |
There's quite a pretty place.
link |
And I crashed straight onto it.
link |
I thought if I get those rocks.
link |
And when I did the first time I hit, the wings came off
link |
and then it bounced.
link |
And the next time the nose came up
link |
and came under the plane and I'm sitting there,
link |
I must've been knocked unconscious
link |
called Pedro shaking me.
link |
Come on, Roger, come on, Roger.
link |
So I stepped out into the water
link |
and here comes these four Federalists
link |
still shooting at us.
link |
And I'm bulleted to hit the airplane.
link |
And I kept a nine millimeter Browning high power
link |
taped to the top of the radio in case I ever needed it.
link |
So, cause you didn't want it in the airplane.
link |
So I just, it was just handy just laying there.
link |
So I took and popped a few caps out of them
link |
and they ran into the rocks.
link |
So we took off running.
link |
And then I looked and Pedro's foot nearly shot off.
link |
They'd shot him on one side of the ankle
link |
and it just blown out the other side.
link |
And it wasn't even hardly bleeding, the shock of it.
link |
So I took my T shirt off and gripped it
link |
and tied it best I could.
link |
But you had still bullets in you.
link |
So like you could still run.
link |
I shot the top of my toenail off.
link |
I shot it across my head and my kneecap.
link |
So I was just nicked.
link |
It was very painful later on,
link |
but right that time I didn't, it was just hot.
link |
And there's a bullet still in my foot from it,
link |
a piece of a bullet.
link |
So we went on up the mountain through the cactus
link |
Just going, I want to go down.
link |
No, no, the federal is going the easy way.
link |
Let's go, this young fella.
link |
And we came to an old donkey.
link |
She must've been 30 years old, long and way back,
link |
long hair on her, Charlotte, Charlotte.
link |
And he petted the donkey and we jumped on.
link |
And we rode for seven.
link |
Like an actual donkey?
link |
There were donkeys all over the place.
link |
Anyhow, he knew that one from the village.
link |
And so we rode seven miles, two of us,
link |
on a donkey with no bridle, no saddle, nothing.
link |
And we came to a little man plowing a little horse
link |
Both of them were spotted and the ox was,
link |
the yoke was across their back this way.
link |
And he was plowing with a little plow among stumps.
link |
It was like one of these people clearing
link |
a little piece of land.
link |
And he had a little house there.
link |
And so we went into his house
link |
and his wife and his daughter,
link |
they put like a cloth over my wounds and on Pedro's.
link |
And they poured diesel oil on it to keep the flies off.
link |
So I'm covered in diesel.
link |
So the man left and he was gone all day.
link |
And then about dark, he showed up,
link |
maybe about 15 or 20 horses and mules showed up
link |
in the yard, walking fast.
link |
And a doctor got out, he said,
link |
I'm Dr. Benjamin Soso with Red Cross.
link |
And he worked on my foot and he worked on Pedro.
link |
He gave us a shot of morphine and tetanus shots.
link |
And he said, you got to get to hospital.
link |
He said, Pedro will die if he don't get to hospital.
link |
He said, they are looking for American pilots
link |
been shot down and they think he's dead.
link |
There was a lot of blood in that airplane.
link |
And so they rode, I don't know how far we rode,
link |
but we rode miles and we'd come to a road
link |
and there was a big truck
link |
and it was loaded with corn in the ear.
link |
And they dug holes in that corn, put us in it
link |
and covered us up.
link |
And the road was rough.
link |
And every time we'd hit a dirt road,
link |
that corn would cover me up.
link |
They'd scratch my face out again.
link |
And when they came to the highway,
link |
we went into a house and they got me some clothes
link |
and mine was messed up and a white basin.
link |
And they must've brought 20 jugs of water different times.
link |
I kept washing and washing my foot
link |
till all the blood and the crud got off of me
link |
and put on those clothes.
link |
And somebody went to, they said,
link |
you can't go North, the road's blocked.
link |
They're looking for the pilot.
link |
So you got to go South.
link |
So they found a taxi in Mazatlan.
link |
And it was a rather new taxi.
link |
And the fellow would take me to Guadalajara,
link |
which was, I don't know, seven, eight hours South.
link |
So we got in that taxi and they propped me up
link |
with sheets and blankets and pillows in the back seat
link |
and gave me these great big white pain pills.
link |
And I was quite content.
link |
Then I was shot down in Columbia also.
link |
What, can you tell that story?
link |
All right, I went down for a load of marijuana
link |
and we got to the place and we got there too early.
link |
And the guerrillas screamed,
link |
you got to get out of here, you got to get out of here.
link |
And so we went back to the place where we stayed from
link |
I had a beautiful DC3, carried three tons.
link |
And so while I was waiting,
link |
I ate something for lunch and I went around behind the house.
link |
We refueled a plane up and I had to wait till late afternoon.
link |
They wanted me to come just at dark
link |
so the military planes couldn't see me on their strip.
link |
So I'm leaning in the hammock asleep
link |
and I hear this terrible roar.
link |
And I looked right up through the trees
link |
and at the end of two military jets going straight up.
link |
They do a dive over and they came back down the strip
link |
in front of that airplane and they just tear it up
link |
with 50 caliber machine guns.
link |
They just showing out.
link |
So I run for the airplane, I just give that guy $80,000
link |
and he ran for the truck
link |
and all the rest of them ran for the truck.
link |
I should have ran with my money,
link |
but I didn't, I ran for the airplane.
link |
And the copilot got in and his name was Al.
link |
He got in with me and two fellows got in the back.
link |
We had drums of fuel in there to refuel
link |
when we got down to the guerrillas.
link |
So we took off and I couldn't get the gear up
link |
because I'd taken off in such a hurry.
link |
These pins in the struts of a DC3 and with big flags on them
link |
and you have to take them up
link |
so that the plane won't come up.
link |
So these jets swarmed on me and they tried to get me to go.
link |
They kept telling me which way to go
link |
and the pilot would be just as close
link |
as just right over there.
link |
I just held up the old iffy piece.
link |
I didn't think they would shoot.
link |
Nobody had shot before.
link |
So I kept flying out and I kept getting slower and slower
link |
and they kept slowing down, down, down
link |
and the black smoke rolling.
link |
And then they started shooting up under me.
link |
Boom, boom, boom, boom with them 20 millimeter cannons.
link |
And then the tracers just going up.
link |
They looked like they're curving up from me.
link |
I woo and I pushed the nose over
link |
so they couldn't get under me.
link |
And later on I heard they thought I tried to ram them.
link |
So one of them went for fuel and I kept on going
link |
and the one just tore the left wing tip up
link |
with the 50 caliber.
link |
And then he come back again and shot the tail up.
link |
And I tell the feller in there, I says,
link |
you know, if you bring me enough water,
link |
I believe I can fly this thing.
link |
My mouth got quite dry.
link |
So I went on and I landed on a big pasture.
link |
And it was huge pasture and it was rougher than it looked.
link |
And the wings just flapped and I come to a stop
link |
and jumped out and pull those tabs out,
link |
threw them on the ground so I could get my gear up.
link |
And I understand that during the 1980 World Series
link |
baseball game that it says American DC three
link |
has just been shot down by American jets,
link |
by Colombian jets.
link |
You know, it's the first plane shot down
link |
on Reagan's new war on drugs.
link |
But he's up, he's up and away, ladies and gentlemen.
link |
We keep you posted.
link |
So I took off again and I went into a thunderstorm
link |
and they came close to the mountains.
link |
So I spiraled up and every time I'd come out,
link |
that jet was there, boom, boom, boom.
link |
And I'd go back into that storm and boom, boom, boom
link |
in there and at 20,000 feet, I started icing up.
link |
So I went out one last time and he was right there waiting.
link |
He had me on radar.
link |
So I went back in and I kicked it over
link |
and put it into a spin and went straight down to 2000 feet
link |
and come out under it.
link |
And I was flying along the Guaviera River
link |
and it was 20 feet above the water.
link |
It looked like a pasture, it was just grass.
link |
And I made several runs to tear the grass down
link |
and it looked like, and it felt hard.
link |
That old DC three weighs 30,000 pounds
link |
and I put it down on the fifth run.
link |
I said, all right, now we're gonna land now.
link |
Did you do like close several times?
link |
I put the wheels down.
link |
Oh, you put the wheels down without landing.
link |
And just, so I'm making a run for it, you know.
link |
So you're being tracked by a jet.
link |
He's trying to, well, before that,
link |
I'm just like retelling this story, how insane it is.
link |
So he's trying to shoot you down
link |
and there's a thunderstorm that you're escaping into.
link |
And then you do a spin down to what, 2000 feet?
link |
Whatever you said, like somehow escaping all of this.
link |
And then you try to land on a pasture
link |
on a giant heavy plane that carries three tons
link |
by touching down five or six times
link |
to make a landing strip for yourself.
link |
Yeah, the grass is three or four feet high.
link |
So it looked really good after about, after a few times.
link |
So then just before it stopped,
link |
I said, Al, take your feet off the brakes.
link |
He said, I don't have my feet on the brakes.
link |
Well, I knew I had broken through the crust
link |
and I put full power on, but it didn't.
link |
That old big plane just come on down
link |
and it just did a head, as it came to a stop,
link |
it did a headstand, 90 degrees to the ground.
link |
And the engines held it up
link |
and the nose and all just crushed in right on it.
link |
We fell between the two seats to keep from getting killed.
link |
And when it come to a stop,
link |
all that fuel was pouring out on those hot engines
link |
and there was an escape hatch at the top.
link |
I just stepped out, took my suitcase with me.
link |
No fire, left the plane there
link |
and the two guys that was in the back,
link |
one of them broke his thumb and it was with the barrels
link |
and they had to put a hose,
link |
tie gas hose together to shimmy down to get out.
link |
That's an incredible story.
link |
Well, let me just tell you,
link |
they had a little bit more to it.
link |
I learned to fly with the idea
link |
of being a missionary aviation fellowship pilot,
link |
fly the missionaries in and out of the jungle.
link |
Well, I went 11 days through that jungle.
link |
The rest of them went on down the road and went to prison.
link |
I said, I'll crawl on my belly six months in here a year,
link |
eating snakes before I'm going down the road.
link |
So I went in there and I was 11 days in the jungle
link |
and I finally came to this place and it had airplanes.
link |
I kept asking the Indian, dandistai avions.
link |
I want to steal an airplane and get out of there.
link |
And when I came to the place,
link |
I asked, what is this place?
link |
It looked like Honolulu in World War II.
link |
There was a runway there.
link |
Said, you don't know.
link |
This is Loma Linda headquarters
link |
for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon.
link |
And they flew me out.
link |
You escaped from prison five times?
link |
So what stands out to you as the most difficult
link |
or miraculous escape in the bunch?
link |
The most black miraculous was
link |
when I was in the courtroom in Spain.
link |
I think I was on the third floor of Real High
link |
and I ran across the courtroom, handcuffed,
link |
kicked the window out.
link |
And I looked down and it was above the palm trees.
link |
I thought there might be a power line
link |
or something I could grab on as I went down.
link |
There was nothing.
link |
And there was a car parked, a station wagon on the side.
link |
You just jumped out?
link |
I jumped out from 31 feet and on top of that car.
link |
And it exploded in the street.
link |
The windshield went over three or four cars.
link |
It looked like snow going up.
link |
And I looked like Donald Duck with the thing coming off
link |
and handcuffs and I got out.
link |
And you just kept running?
link |
Yeah, I kept running.
link |
They ran me down and hit me in the back.
link |
I still got a dead spot in my back
link |
where the policeman hit me with a shotgun.
link |
And they brought me back.
link |
Murray was there and they were saying,
link |
your husband is crazy.
link |
That was spectacular.
link |
But I escaped from Lubeck, maximum security prison.
link |
And I cut out of there and got out.
link |
That was a miraculous escape.
link |
And that was where?
link |
In Lubeck, Germany.
link |
What was that escape like?
link |
I was there and they was going to extradite me
link |
back to the United States
link |
where I still had all these charges
link |
and 25 years special parole.
link |
And I was cleaning the lawyer's visiting room
link |
and on it was bars that looked like piano notes
link |
or this way to make it pretty.
link |
But they was a little bit,
link |
so I got a rope from a guy where they made boats in there.
link |
And I had 20 minutes.
link |
So I went in there and I wrapped it around
link |
and I put a broom handle in it
link |
that was cut off and wrapped it around
link |
until they pull the bars together on that side.
link |
And then I pulled them together on the other side.
link |
But that only put me in inside the prison yard
link |
where the soccer equipment was kept.
link |
But they were putting new windows on one side of the prison
link |
and they had it scaffolded up to the fourth floor.
link |
So there was a little recess there
link |
and there was guard towers every 100 feet or so.
link |
I mean, they would shoot and kill you.
link |
So I got behind that and climbed up holding to the bricks
link |
on one hand and the scaffolding on the other
link |
and went to the roof.
link |
I lost my shirt and most of my clothes
link |
going through the window.
link |
I got all the skin off of me.
link |
I thought I was gonna die.
link |
And I was trying to go sideways like this.
link |
And finally I got a grip and the bars let me through
link |
and took all the skin off of me.
link |
So I got up on that roof and I have asthma
link |
and I just lay there trying to catch my breath.
link |
Didn't bring my inhaler.
link |
With blood everywhere.
link |
Oh, I was bloody, yes.
link |
And so I got down to the end
link |
and on the end, the reason I did it,
link |
they would put it, they was putting a new wall again
link |
around the prison to make it larger.
link |
And they had taken all the wire off above the Sally port
link |
where they could join the two walls together.
link |
And I saw that when I came up and there was a guard,
link |
a half of like a dome sticking out of that brick building
link |
where there's a guard there with a gun and he'd kill you.
link |
And I mean, he was made,
link |
he was surely trained to kill you.
link |
And we had some bad people in that place.
link |
So I lay up one floor above it
link |
and I saw a guard and his wife come with a double umbrella.
link |
It was just pouring down the rain.
link |
Here I am without a shirt on, bloody.
link |
And she had a little boy with him under that double umbrella
link |
and I knew him and when he come
link |
and she started back from the Sally port,
link |
I hit the top of that guard tower, bam, with both feet.
link |
And I jumped, I guess it's three more floors.
link |
I jumped, there was a pile of sand,
link |
like a cone where they were digging it there.
link |
And I hit that and my feet buried up to the knees,
link |
but I didn't fall.
link |
And I ran straight towards her so he couldn't shoot me.
link |
And then I went around some bushes and went downhill.
link |
And then I heard bam, bam, bam, bam, bam behind me.
link |
And I looked and that fool woman was in a big old car
link |
and she was knocking down the parking meters behind me.
link |
She was trying to run over me.
link |
And I ran behind the car
link |
and she tore the fender off of her car,
link |
trying to yell and yow, yow, yow,
link |
and a terrible evil looking face at me, screaming at me.
link |
And the sirens going off in the prison.
link |
And there was a fence there, a wall.
link |
And I jumped up on it to jump over
link |
and it had glass embedded.
link |
And I cut my hands and my arms all up getting over that.
link |
And I hit the ground on the other side
link |
and it was like, it was that mucked muck
link |
where some farmer had dug it.
link |
I dug in there and Maury had slipped me $200 into prison.
link |
And I had that in my shoe and I lost my shoes in that muck.
link |
But anyway, I got out of there and got to Holland.
link |
Really a heck of a story how I did that.
link |
What was prison like, whether it's Germany
link |
or whether it's Australia?
link |
What were some of the darker moments in prison?
link |
The United States prisons are awful,
link |
awful evil places now.
link |
And just really, there's nothing nice about them.
link |
There's the guards.
link |
And everyone I went to.
link |
It seemed like the further east I went to Oklahoma
link |
and it was nicer, but all of them on the West Coast,
link |
they was hatred there.
link |
And they got really stupid people hired, just incredibly.
link |
Oh, hatred by the guards.
link |
And the inmates, like I speak Spanish
link |
and I walked in to the Spanish TV room
link |
and it was saying, you know, no, you can't come in here.
link |
And I walked across to the black,
link |
hey, get out of here, white boy.
link |
It was just like, what?
link |
Man, I like all you people, you know?
link |
And so I walked down to the white people and said,
link |
show us your paperwork.
link |
You can't come in here until you show your paperwork.
link |
We don't let snitches and homosexuals
link |
and all this sort of stuff in here.
link |
So they have, so it's just like,
link |
man, I don't wanna be in here.
link |
I mean, it sounds absurd,
link |
but you're saying like the basic humanity is gone.
link |
Completely, completely in the guards.
link |
It was just like, come here, Reeves.
link |
And I woke up to him, get the fuck out of my face.
link |
Sticks his chin out, like for me to break his jaw.
link |
Like, what in the world, man?
link |
I love people and it's just.
link |
Yeah, you got this joy to you.
link |
You have a joyful nature.
link |
And it didn't seem like that broke you.
link |
How did you persevere?
link |
Did you know, I didn't even think I persevered,
link |
but I try to enjoy my life wherever I am every day.
link |
And like I told you, why do you run so, Roger?
link |
I said, to help me suffer these fools.
link |
And I played a game of chess every day,
link |
almost of my life in there.
link |
And I read two books a week.
link |
And I talked with people, storytellers,
link |
guys would come in and, tell us another story, Roger.
link |
Tell us one you never told us before.
link |
And so it was just nice.
link |
A lot of them have original boys.
link |
They picked their country music and it was all right.
link |
Red, Morgan Freeman's character
link |
in The Shawshank Redemption says the following.
link |
These walls are funny.
link |
First you hate them, then you get used to them.
link |
Enough time passes you get, so you depend on them.
link |
That's institutionalized.
link |
Is there truth to that?
link |
100%, I didn't even see the walls,
link |
except whenever I was planning on escaping.
link |
In Shawshank Redemption, he spent so many years in prison
link |
that he almost didn't know what to do with himself
link |
once he left, once he was a free man.
link |
That's the, you get so used to the system,
link |
the rituals, having to follow orders,
link |
even being treated poorly,
link |
all those kinds of things that you become dependent on.
link |
Well, down in Australia, I spent the first,
link |
a little over a year in the shoe.
link |
It was like, did you see the movie,
link |
The Silence of the Lambs, thank you, Marty.
link |
And he said, I had five or six guards
link |
looking at me with a one way mirror.
link |
And that's whenever I thought I might never get out,
link |
I got a life sentence.
link |
I had all this time waiting here in Germany.
link |
And so that's, they had a computer in there,
link |
but it didn't have a program on it.
link |
And I wrote, so I just started writing
link |
these little stories of stuff I did in my life.
link |
And I wrote one line and I wrote over a million words
link |
with them looking at me.
link |
So it was after a year, they let me out.
link |
It wasn't long before they put me
link |
in a place called Self Care.
link |
And particularly, I was in what they call the lifers pod.
link |
There was 268 men in Self Care there.
link |
And it was unbelievably good that we were left alone.
link |
Basically, they was there or the guards
link |
were certainly there, but they had their shack
link |
and we had apartments, four apartments to the building.
link |
And six men to the unit with your own door
link |
and a key to it and a kitchen, dining room,
link |
freezer, refrigerator.
link |
And they gave you, allowed you $360 a week to buy groceries.
link |
And I cooked for about 16 years and learned to cook good.
link |
And the people and other people have their specialties.
link |
And so that was quite, it wasn't so like being in prison.
link |
It was somewhat living with me and it was difficult, man.
link |
I had some good fights and carry on.
link |
You don't get along with everybody.
link |
But then whenever I came back to the United States,
link |
I was laughing and talking.
link |
And when I got off the plane in LA,
link |
I had three marshals with me from Australia.
link |
I was slammed upside the wall.
link |
I mean, hard, put ankle mics on and handcuffed so tight
link |
till they cut my lane off.
link |
Face forward, face forward, lands apart.
link |
And walked me 50 steps and turned me over to the marshals
link |
and they took part of that off.
link |
That was a border patrol that was there
link |
over my marijuana charge from 1977.
link |
I did 11 years for parole violation.
link |
Now they want me for more violation.
link |
And they put me in, down in Los Angeles,
link |
they put me in, the marshals put me in there
link |
and they put me in isolation.
link |
I thought, what in the world they got me for isolation for?
link |
I'm doing anything.
link |
How long did you spend in isolation?
link |
More than six months.
link |
So I, after three or four days
link |
as the little Judas window slide open
link |
and a man, a nice looking man in a suit come there,
link |
hello Reeves, I wanna, just wanna see what you look like.
link |
I saw your National Geographic documentary
link |
and it does me pleasure to keep you in isolation.
link |
And he slammed the thing and I couldn't get out of there.
link |
And by law, the US Parole Commission
link |
is supposed to give you a hearing within 90 days.
link |
So Murray paid a lawyer $7,500
link |
and he never picked up the phone.
link |
Somebody got to him.
link |
Who's that somebody you think?
link |
Christopher Cannon was his name
link |
and I don't know who got to him,
link |
but he didn't do anything to get me out of there.
link |
I got one 15 minute phone call a month
link |
and I couldn't get out.
link |
So then after six months, they put me on Conair,
link |
double shackled and black box on my hands.
link |
And I went to Oklahoma
link |
and they let me out on the floor.
link |
I couldn't imagine.
link |
Then I could call after a couple of days
link |
and they said, there was a man here from Washington
link |
give you a parole hearing and you only got here at 3.30.
link |
So he left, he said he'd be back next year.
link |
I've been in now over six months.
link |
So then there was a lovely little lady,
link |
she was a case manager or something.
link |
She said, you can ask for parole on the record.
link |
And I said, please do.
link |
So I sent them an email
link |
and the next day I got my parole.
link |
90 days later, they sent me to Terminal Island
link |
and put me in the place there with the invalid,
link |
I guess since I'm as old as I am, 78 years old.
link |
So they put me in the people in there dying
link |
and wheelchairs and legs off and arms off and cancer.
link |
So I was in there and I pushed the fellows around
link |
and I went, come out of the chow hall there
link |
and I went to go to the right to get me a haircut
link |
and the two Mexican guys there, Lieutenant and another one,
link |
walked between us and he went like the boop, boop, boop.
link |
I could outrun you.
link |
And they slammed me, put me on the ground,
link |
handcuffed me and put me in the shoe for a week.
link |
I got out and man, they put me back in the place.
link |
They treated me rough.
link |
So I got in a little more trouble
link |
and they put me back in the shoe and I wouldn't come out.
link |
They had that, the virus was out killing people.
link |
So they killed eight people in that unit I was in.
link |
So I mean, I wouldn't even come out to take a shower.
link |
I had a little straw that I put in the sink
link |
and I'd take a sock that I had and scrub myself with it
link |
with some slope and a glass of water over my head
link |
and then clean the floor up and put it in the toilet.
link |
So that was your time during the coronavirus pandemic.
link |
I got out last April, right in the middle of it
link |
and they were dying bad in there.
link |
So I was treated worse for that last year in America
link |
than I was for the whole 20 years in Australia,
link |
the 18 years in Australia.
link |
And then you were a free man at the end of that year.
link |
They put me out and sent me home
link |
and the parole officers couldn't even come.
link |
They weren't working.
link |
They were just doing everything by video.
link |
They said, better not have a drink.
link |
The only constituent thing was
link |
I couldn't even have a drink of wine.
link |
So after a year, I had to take psychiatric treatment.
link |
Every week I had to go talk to the psychiatrist,
link |
psychologist and me and her got along great.
link |
She was a good Christian woman.
link |
We just chatted and talked.
link |
And I think they said,
link |
so I had to pee in the bottle every week.
link |
I said, I've been in 33 years.
link |
How many piss deaths do you think I've had?
link |
Only thing if you all wanna clean when you come get me.
link |
Before I talk to you about love,
link |
let me ask you a difficult question.
link |
You write in your book,
link |
''I don't consider myself much of a criminal.
link |
I don't lie, cheat or steal.
link |
And I always take up for the underdog.
link |
Violence makes me sick.
link |
Yet I know I'm an outlaw
link |
and those that break the law must be punished.
link |
I think many people listening to this
link |
or some people listening to this
link |
will see you as a criminal, as a bad man
link |
who increased the amount of suffering in this world.
link |
What do you have to say to them?
link |
I would like to tell them
link |
that they have been indoctrinated by the spin
link |
of news and politicians
link |
and they don't know the truth of the situation.
link |
You lay the truth out there in an envelope,
link |
let me open it besides something else that is false
link |
and it's staggering.
link |
The truth is that I was a tobacco farmer
link |
and tobacco kills 500,000 people a year in America
link |
and 6 million have debilitating diseases because of it.
link |
Drugs, all drugs combined kill
link |
between 10 and 15,000 people a year by overdose
link |
and 60% of those are pharmaceutical.
link |
Now, then when I was a tobacco farmer,
link |
come sit on the front pew, Mr. Reeves,
link |
come on up here, you're a gentleman.
link |
You just joined the Masonic Lodge and you joined our church
link |
and you just come on and sit down with the good people.
link |
You grow two marijuana plants,
link |
get out of here you scumbag
link |
and the marijuana doesn't hurt anybody.
link |
It's just, that's the truth of it.
link |
And so in your career,
link |
you walked amidst violence
link |
but you never participated in the violence.
link |
I didn't even see it.
link |
Just didn't happen around me, in prison it did.
link |
I sewed people up, they called me doc.
link |
I had dental floss and one time I had to get a blade
link |
and try to help keep from my patient from getting again.
link |
But I was just like, if I shot at those people,
link |
I shot at them to keep them from killing me.
link |
I certainly didn't mean to kill them.
link |
So that's just, some people are evil
link |
and they will kill you and hurt you and lie to you.
link |
I just don't do any of that.
link |
It just makes you sick.
link |
When I was in the shoe, three guys tried to kill a guy
link |
and they stabbed him so many times,
link |
but they stabbed Blake and the blood getting out of the room.
link |
I said, you're gonna kill him.
link |
You're gonna kill him and save his life.
link |
Drug him up there where the guards could see him.
link |
There's stuff like that.
link |
I'm just not of that nature of those people.
link |
They're just evil.
link |
They're people born evil, I believe.
link |
It is heartbreaking to hear that the basic humanity
link |
is gone in prison in the United States.
link |
That's heartbreaking because that basic humanity
link |
is actually the light at the end of the tunnel.
link |
It's the thing that saves us as opposed to,
link |
when it's absent, it's the thing that destroys us.
link |
The prisons are filled, absolutely filled with people
link |
that have some mental problems.
link |
Now, you see Tent City all the way up and down here.
link |
I guarantee you, every one of those people
link |
have mental problems, some degree.
link |
However little it is, but they are a little bit off.
link |
Now, then you get a DEA agent
link |
that wants to make a name for himself.
link |
He goes down there and gets two of them,
link |
one of them to sell a little two grams of methamphetamine
link |
to the other one, and he gets a conviction.
link |
And a young prosecutor, he gets a conviction.
link |
He wants to make a judge.
link |
And we got the judge in, where was it?
link |
I'm gonna give a million, what was his name?
link |
I'm gonna give him in a million years
link |
before I get off the judge.
link |
You get fools like that in charge.
link |
You're gonna fill prisons up with pitiful humanity.
link |
And those are the ones.
link |
And then the other is people over drugs.
link |
And drugs should be a health issue.
link |
You cannot police it enough.
link |
It's just, they know the only thing
link |
that overdoses is opioids, the heroin.
link |
And if they can give it to him,
link |
it costs about a dollar a day
link |
to give the worst addict his fix.
link |
But they'll give it methadone,
link |
which is from a pharmaceutical company,
link |
which is just as bad.
link |
Why in the world, we tried it all over the world
link |
in Portugal and England.
link |
And when they give the girls cleanup,
link |
no more stolen cars, why?
link |
Who wants to keep this farce going?
link |
They just perpetuating it.
link |
Like, oh, every little police place
link |
is getting all these suits and armor and machine guns.
link |
It's just like, oh, it's such a spin, it's sad.
link |
Do you think all drugs should be legalized?
link |
I don't know about that,
link |
but they certainly should be controlled.
link |
If a person is an addict,
link |
he should be able to go down and get his fix
link |
with somebody there to help him
link |
with a clean needle and a glass of orange juice.
link |
It's so much cheaper than prison.
link |
It's so much cheaper than him stealing cars
link |
or a prostitute having to go to work.
link |
You've lived one heck of a life.
link |
Looking back, there's a lot of young people
link |
that listen to this, high school, college students.
link |
What advice would you give them?
link |
How to live, how to have a successful career,
link |
how to have a good life, how to be a good man or woman?
link |
To be a good man or woman,
link |
if I had it to do over with,
link |
I'll just tell you what I'd have done.
link |
I would have paid attention and studied my lesson
link |
and did the best I could.
link |
In school. In school, yes.
link |
And went as far as I could have.
link |
I would have liked to been a doctor.
link |
I just didn't have the stickability
link |
or anybody to tell me, hey, go over there and do that.
link |
And if you can do that at a very young age,
link |
start in a trade, learn to do something.
link |
It doesn't matter what it is.
link |
If you learn to do something good,
link |
there is a great demand for you.
link |
And I would say that in prison,
link |
that the prison system should come in
link |
and you get a thief, young fans of thief,
link |
robber, and you say, all right, we need carpenters.
link |
We need electricians.
link |
Sentence them to that trade.
link |
And when you get an A plus in that,
link |
where you can go out and make you $30 or $50 an hour,
link |
Now you can mess around 10 years if you want to,
link |
or you can do this in two.
link |
I think that's just for the prison.
link |
But anyway, I would say that they find somebody
link |
and be true to them.
link |
That we have, just be honest and true in your life.
link |
You mean like relationships, friendships?
link |
Relationships, yes.
link |
I mean, so many, so many people,
link |
particularly our children, are from relationships
link |
where they not wanted their divorce.
link |
Their father's left.
link |
They don't know who their daddy is.
link |
They're just in foster homes.
link |
500,000 children are in foster homes in America today.
link |
And we have, and our government inadvertently
link |
isn't encouraging those people.
link |
My daughter is a doctor and she delivered a couple
link |
of years ago a baby from a 10 year old child.
link |
That child, and she said in the visiting room
link |
is four generations, all of them on welfare.
link |
Now we got one more.
link |
And it reminds me of Elvis Presley's song, In the Ghetto.
link |
So for an individual, learn a trade, become a craftsman,
link |
learn a trade, become a craftsman of sorts,
link |
and find somebody to love and who loves you.
link |
That's right, have a family and stick with it.
link |
Surely you're gonna get angry.
link |
You're gonna get disappointed.
link |
You're gonna get all kinds of stuff,
link |
but come back and make up before you go to sleep.
link |
Well, I did half of those things.
link |
I got the first one and working on the second one.
link |
So I appreciate the advice.
link |
Well, Mari, thank you so much for joining us.
link |
Can you tell me the story of how you two met?
link |
Well, my parents every summer would go to the lake
link |
in Canada and the place was called Turkey Point,
link |
which is on Lake Erie, and just have a nice summer holiday
link |
there, water skiing, swimming, sunbathing.
link |
This was back in the 60s and I was sitting on the pier
link |
with a few girlfriends and telling them my story.
link |
And then all of a sudden I looked up
link |
and I saw this figure in the distance coming onto the pier.
link |
Now we're all dressed in bathing suits and swimwear.
link |
We're swimming and this, that, and the other.
link |
And here he comes, dark trousers.
link |
In fact, they were black, white shirt and a tie
link |
and a straw kind of a Panama hat.
link |
And so he stood out.
link |
And so I invited him to come and sit down.
link |
And so he continued to talk and we just talked
link |
and talked and talked and then later moved to the beach.
link |
And I think the next time I saw him,
link |
he was talking to another girl and I thought, yeah,
link |
you know, I know, I was okay, okay, next.
link |
Well, but six months later I receive a letter
link |
and it's a letter from Roger.
link |
And then we start this lovely correspondence
link |
and we just start writing, you know, in those days,
link |
you just wrote everything.
link |
And then the next summer he was coming up again.
link |
He was on his way to Alaska and he says,
link |
I would like to come by and see you.
link |
And I said, well, I'll be in the same place
link |
that I met you last year.
link |
And so when he came up this time,
link |
for some reason Roger reached for my hand
link |
and I reached for his and man, that was it.
link |
It was like love at first touch.
link |
It was just like a silence, you know, and oh my gosh.
link |
And we didn't even look at each other.
link |
It was just, oh my goodness, what happened here?
link |
And I was the type of person, I never wanted to get married,
link |
not way, way, way down the road, never have any children.
link |
And I wanted to see the world first and then do all that,
link |
But that was it, that was love
link |
and you've been together ever since.
link |
Well, the thing is about the love
link |
that the two of you have for each other
link |
is it had to persevere through quite a heck of a journey.
link |
So how did Roger's drug smuggling
link |
change the nature of your love and your relationship?
link |
Well, Lex, that remained steadfast.
link |
It endured and since Roger's been home,
link |
I think we've rekindled the love that we had
link |
when we first met.
link |
But I think my faith, you know, my faith,
link |
my steadfast faith and also the fact
link |
that Roger and I communicated.
link |
We wrote letters, you know, he never complained.
link |
I know there were the children there.
link |
He never had mistreated me.
link |
I love this guy and we had a lot of experiences.
link |
It was just, even though I.
link |
He's good looking, charismatic, he's pretty, you know.
link |
Yeah, and he was adventurous, you know,
link |
and I, would you say that again?
link |
But yes, it was just, I know, you know,
link |
I missed him physically, but he was just,
link |
we were just so strong in spirit, you know,
link |
and we could talk to one another.
link |
Well, what was it like, Roger, when you're a free man
link |
seeing Mari for the first time in person again?
link |
I cried for three days.
link |
Everything, I had to look at a picture of her.
link |
I came home and there she prepared a meal for me
link |
and it was the old oak table that I'd redone
link |
and the chairs, the same one, and the green placemats
link |
and the same china that we had and the same silverware.
link |
And it just, just all of it just brought back
link |
the same paintings on the wall.
link |
It was just like unbelievable.
link |
After 35 years, she had all my clothes cleaned
link |
and my shoes shining and I put the shoes on
link |
and I walked out on the strings on this
link |
and the soles came off, but the shirts
link |
and all fit perfect and everything.
link |
So it was just wonderful.
link |
And just to see her and then just to think about,
link |
see her picture of her 50th birthday
link |
or her 60th birthday or her 70th birthday.
link |
And the picture of her and with the children,
link |
it just, it was heartbreaking.
link |
And about the third day, I thought,
link |
man up, fella, I mean, you've got to.
link |
So I got over it and quit the tears.
link |
It was, everything was just pulsating with life.
link |
It was just unbelievable to get out of that place.
link |
Is there, do you regret the drug smuggling
link |
that took you away from the woman you love?
link |
Just, you know, I wouldn't have done it again
link |
if you don't think you're going to get caught.
link |
And it's just, no, it's just, I did it for money
link |
and I had everything in the world I wanted
link |
before I did that.
link |
So the adventure, I mean, it was one heck of an adventure
link |
for the two of you, for the both of you.
link |
Were you able to enjoy it or was it always danger?
link |
Was it always something that threatened your relationship,
link |
your love, your family?
link |
Or were you able to enjoy the adventure of it?
link |
You know, we'll all die.
link |
And to live that kind of adventure.
link |
Well, whenever I did the first loot, I got $10,000.
link |
And that was just about, that was just about two years
link |
pay on the fire department take home.
link |
And I brought that home and.
link |
I put my hand over my mouth.
link |
I said, Roger, I can't believe this.
link |
All the money and money like, oh my, what in the world?
link |
Roger said, let's go have dinner.
link |
And so we went to the little restaurant
link |
that we would normally, we would go to, you know,
link |
and he said, and don't you dare look
link |
on the right hand side of the menu.
link |
He said, just order anything you want.
link |
And it was just, as we were in the restaurant, you know,
link |
it was just, we were giddy about it.
link |
Yeah, I was giddy about it.
link |
Were you afraid that, I mean, did you think about the fact
link |
that it's illegal and Roger can end up in prison?
link |
Did you guys talk about it?
link |
Well, I just, I kind of thought I was bulletproof.
link |
I mean, they didn't catch you.
link |
I thought if they didn't catch you, you was all right.
link |
And it was hard to get you.
link |
It was hard to catch you in the air.
link |
So you never thought, hard to catch you in the air.
link |
I didn't know that if your friend told on you
link |
five years later, you'd still go to prison.
link |
That was a problem.
link |
I didn't know that.
link |
Did you guys ever talk about walking away?
link |
I asked Roger to walk away.
link |
And he says, I can't, Mario, just now, you know.
link |
And then of course, the amount of people
link |
that he began to support, the family and the gifts and the.
link |
The deals, yes, the deals.
link |
Yes, and then you always want to do,
link |
what do you do with the money?
link |
So you want to, I guess you clean it up
link |
or you want to invest in an enterprise or in a business.
link |
Well, it just doesn't work.
link |
They know the source of it and they take it and run.
link |
Every one of them.
link |
But he was very generous, extremely generous
link |
and benevolent and.
link |
And when I started, I would ask about,
link |
I went to a lawyer and a good number of people
link |
in California at that time wanted to legalize marijuana
link |
And I went to a lawyer and I says,
link |
Mr. Lawyer, I put $100 on to say,
link |
what would they do if I caught me
link |
bringing marijuana across the border?
link |
He said, if you have a criminal record, I said, no,
link |
I've never had a speeding ticket, nothing,
link |
not even a traffic ticket.
link |
I said, he said, you work for the fire department?
link |
He said, you'll get probation.
link |
The worst you'll do is you'll get one year
link |
and you'll spend four months raking leaves
link |
on a military base.
link |
So my mother and my father died some years before
link |
and I brought mother and baby sister came out
link |
and I took them down to Disneyland
link |
and she said, what you doing, boy?
link |
I said, I'm hauling pot, mom.
link |
She said, how much you making?
link |
I said, I'm making $40,000 any day I want to go.
link |
And she said, what do they do if they catch you?
link |
And I told her, what the lawyer said.
link |
Four months at the most raking leaves,
link |
that's what do you think?
link |
She said, do you need a copilot, son?
link |
Yeah, money is money, yeah.
link |
So your relationship persevered through some big challenges.
link |
Is there advice you can give about what makes
link |
for a successful relationship?
link |
Oh, well, you know, I think the initial igniting,
link |
meeting someone, you know, that's the love.
link |
And that little fire, that fire just keeps burning
link |
and burning and burning.
link |
You can't put it out no matter what.
link |
It's the love fire.
link |
But it gets difficult.
link |
It's funny, the love fire.
link |
So you're saying the love fire is all it takes
link |
to persevere through the difficulty.
link |
Well, no, well, that's a huge part of it.
link |
And also I contribute my individual situation
link |
to in order to endure the prison years is my faith.
link |
And friends who were unconditionally still loved me
link |
no matter what, yes.
link |
So you had love around you in general.
link |
I did, and my children.
link |
They, you know, and that was a real purpose
link |
to guide them and to love them
link |
and to help them become citizens.
link |
What about you, Roger?
link |
What advice would you give?
link |
I just don't know how to do it,
link |
but I do know that you have to work on a relationship.
link |
Mara and I's had problems.
link |
I mean, we get really.
link |
You guys get in fights?
link |
That's pretty regular, but not,
link |
they don't let them last long, you know,
link |
but certainly we are so different.
link |
We're the same, and yet we're so different, yeah.
link |
Like little stuff?
link |
Little stuff, yes.
link |
And it might be big, but I usually win her over, you know?
link |
But anyhow, I just feel like Mara was always there.
link |
It was like she was my anchor.
link |
I was coming home.
link |
I was always coming home to her and the children.
link |
And you can see throughout my life,
link |
I'm working on getting there.
link |
Are you afraid for his life, by the way?
link |
Oh, yeah, there are times, yeah.
link |
But you know, I had faith in him.
link |
He was an excellent pilot.
link |
For example, I always said,
link |
Roger, if the ship's going down,
link |
I'm jumping in the lifeboat with you
link |
because I know we're going to get to shore.
link |
And so I had that faith in him, you know?
link |
I mean, he's a man, but yet he's the one
link |
you want to get into the lifeboat with.
link |
But then there is, you know, Pablo Escobar,
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one of the most dangerous humans in history,
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plus the U.S. government.
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Very difficult, very difficult to get away.
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In terms of your faith, how has your faith helped you
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to be the woman you are in this relationship
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and seeing love the way you see it?
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Well, I think my faith gives me hope.
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I have lots of hope.
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It helps me to dwell on the good side.
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You know, when I ever meet someone
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and there's some negative,
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I try to see why they are like that
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or what's the source of all that.
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And I try to pull out the good.
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Not that I'm a goody goody,
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but that's what your faith does.
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You know, you see them as God sees us.
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How has he changed over the years?
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He's still the same.
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Actually, I like him better now.
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He's a little calmer.
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Yeah, that's crazy.
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And happy to be, you know, at home,
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or he'll say, Mari, I am just so happy
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to be with you here in this condominium.
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Because I used to call him my homing pigeon.
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I just have to let him fly.
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I couldn't, you know, he has to fly,
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but he always came home.
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Do you think about the end of this ride, our mortality?
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Do you think about your death?
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Particularly, I'm going to have a heart valve replacement
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in about seven days where I could not make it.
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You know, it's a very serious operation.
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And I think about that very much.
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And I ask for peace.
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I just lost my brother about 10 days ago, so unexpectedly.
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And that really put, you know,
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makes you think of your mortality.
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Somewhat, and yet not.
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I want to live, Lex.
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I want to live, you know?
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Do you think about your death, Roger?
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Visions, and they often happen very, very clear,
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like what I have seen in the future.
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Scientists might call it wormholes,
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or in the Old Testament they called it prophets,
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but I see sometimes into the future around the corner.
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It's clear as we're sitting right here.
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What's that look like?
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and I believe I was in like Central America place.
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I was an old man with khaki pants and a white shirt.
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And it was a chair with a wide arms, and it was straight,
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and there was like the beams coming out above my head,
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and I'm on a porch.
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And I come, I have out of the body experiences also.
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And I came out of my body,
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just, I just floated out of my body,
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and went into a veil, and like into a mist.
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And I believe that's probably why it happened.
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You talk about like it's in your past.
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This is your future.
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This is in my future.
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But this is something he has seen,
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you know, in the past. I've seen it in a vision.
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Yeah, in a vision. No, I know, but it's funny,
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just the tense you use, it happened,
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and yet it's something that will happen.
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It's just unbelievable that,
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and I don't know how many people have it, but I have it.
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I walked out of my body just like,
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just where I could come up to you and look,
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and set up on the radio.
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I used to be at work on the railroad,
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and I had them there.
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How do you explain that?
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What do you think, what the heck is going on
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in this universe that's possible?
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Oh, I don't know, but certainly,
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certainly a phenomenon which has happened.
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And there's a guy, Bill Monroe,
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that wrote the book on it, Out of the Body.
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He tells about it.
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And who was the guy that writes The Alchemist?
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He has them also, just like that.
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And he tells about how it happens on him.
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Mine happened differently.
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But you certainly can come out of your body.
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What do you think the meaning of this life is,
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maybe from your faith,
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but also from just the amazing adventure
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that you lived through?
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How do you make sense of why the heck we're here?
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It's just kind of like who you are.
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Even when I was a child, I was like,
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I'm different from other people.
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And just as a boy, I was, like I had a...
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Could you put into words how you were different
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or it was just the feeling?
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Yeah, like my brother, I mean,
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he kept his hands clean and his shoes shining.
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Here I was barefooted catching a wild hog
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or a rattle on a horse trying to get it down.
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I saw pictures of you climbing a tree recently.
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When I first got out of prison,
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always something like that.
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It's just that, and I noticed that something about me
link |
is sometimes in prison, there'd be a knife fight.
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And people just, you see them rough guys
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that turn white from it.
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I just kind of almost like smile.
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I mean, if they come at me, I turn white and get away.
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But it doesn't bother, those things,
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they still didn't bother me.
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I just, prison didn't bother me.
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So you don't know what the heck the meaning is.
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You just know you're a bit different than the others.
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Yeah, I might be a little bit kooky.
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Well, maybe the whole point is you want to realize,
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you want to let that madness flourish,
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that uniqueness flourish.
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That's the whole point of life.
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We're all different in our,
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in very interesting little ways.
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And the more different you are, you want to let that,
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you want to let that become, you want to let it be its full.
link |
It's like a garden, all the different flowers.
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You did mention you weren't sure
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if there's a free will or not.
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Do you think it's all predetermined?
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Or do you think we make our choices?
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No, we definitely make our decisions.
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I just said, if it is, I hope that,
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but I know that we make our decisions.
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And I know that we are spirits
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that are living in this flesh.
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That's beyond a shadow of a doubt for me.
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If you walk out of your body
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and have out of body experience, you will know it.
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So the body is just the temporary container
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for something much bigger.
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The spirit lives on eternally with no beginning and no end.
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And that's hard to fathom.
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Yeah, this is just a little,
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this is a shell to contain that spirit.
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This is the way we work on earth.
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But yeah, I know it.
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I'm an eternal being.
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Do you think there's a why to it?
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Do you think there's a meaning to this life?
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Well, I think the why is beyond my capability
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It's someone greater than me.
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I don't understand it,
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I just know that it's awesome.
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And one day we will know the answers.
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Once we get to that crossover to the other side,
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I think we will understand clearly.
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It says, you know, now we see through a glass darkly,
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but then when we are face to face with God,
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we will understand.
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And until we know, let's just enjoy this beautiful life
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I love everybody and everything I do.
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And it just, and I'm sorry,
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if I put a stumbling block in anybody's way,
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I wouldn't want to,
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but these are these things that when I just think about,
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oh, what a hypocritical world we live in though.
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Like most anybody, I'd say, listen, okay,
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he's a drug dealer.
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And I would say most of them had committed adultery.
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That's a cardinal sin.
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And yet they move, throw rocks at me for moving a marijuana,
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cocaine across the road.
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It's just, if you saw the two different things,
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you'd say, what a terrible difference it is.
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But we become conditioned with this mad society
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You mentioned that your daughter, Miriam, wrote you a poem.
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Do you mind reading it?
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I was doing 11 years up in Lombok Penitentiary,
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maximum security prison for parole violation
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for possession of marijuana in 1977.
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They should have given me six months,
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but they gave me 11 years because they wanted me
link |
for what they call silent beef.
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Anyhow, while I was in that dungeon,
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I received a letter from my daughter, Miriam.
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It's called Daddy's Poem.
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A year ago, I became a poet when I wrote your birthday prose.
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And here I am today, ready to give it another go.
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First, I would like to wish you a very happy birthday to be
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and to thank you so very much
link |
for without you, I would not be me.
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Secondly, I want to say that your support has been immense.
link |
It has been true, honest, loving, and free of all pretense.
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Thirdly, it goes without saying,
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your love has surpassed all my wrongs
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and you always made me smile
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with one of your old country songs.
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I can remember on Cuervo, Daddy,
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with you holding me in your arms,
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as you sang Jim Reeves songs and talked about the farm.
link |
I can see you walking through the door
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from one of your travels far and wide
link |
and the thought of you coming home, Daddy,
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kept a twinkle in our eyes.
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I can smell you as I did when I used to climb into your bed
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and you would talk to me again
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about one of the adventures that you led.
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I can see me and Mario asleep
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in one of your airplanes extraordinaire
link |
and remembering wondering to myself
link |
why there wasn't an available chair.
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I remember having to meet you
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and worrying that you wouldn't be there,
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but you would pop from behind some counter
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and give us all a happy scare.
link |
You gave us presents in Key Biscayne
link |
and hotels pleasure galore
link |
and three dozen roses that we came through the airport door.
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I can see your face in Amsterdam with the luggage carousel
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and you look like a boy with a secret
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that you were just dying to tell.
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You taught me mathematics in the sands of far away places
link |
and taught me to sail and we left without any traces.
link |
We climbed glaciers in Argentina
link |
and saw the blue of the beautiful caves
link |
and witnessed the majestic beauty of such a juggling maze.
link |
I learned how to change gears on the dirt roads of Brazil.
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We ate hot dogs in Paraguay, a memory we smile over still.
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We talked about lions, elephants and bears
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on a Hacienda in Uruguay,
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but decided it was better if the Europe we did fly.
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Oh, the old world and all its luxury,
link |
what a good time it was.
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From South America to the Krosnopolsky,
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I think we fell in love.
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The European jaunt, well, it is considered a book in itself
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but it's a story about beauty and knowledge,
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suspense and worldly wealth.
link |
We went from Holland to Sweden,
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we went from France to Spain
link |
and I promise you I have no regrets.
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I would definitely do it all again.
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I would see the world with you anytime, sir.
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There's no doubt in my mind
link |
because being by your side, daddy,
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always ensures a wild good time.
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So our paths took a turn and we're back in the US of A,
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but life here isn't so bad and I'm plumb content to stay.
link |
I'm happy to be near you,
link |
although I'm not as close as I was before,
link |
but because of your love and encouragement,
link |
I've been able to open new doors.
link |
I'm grateful to be in school
link |
and I'm genuinely happy where I am.
link |
And I even like when you call and tell me to study
link |
for the next exam.
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What a life you've given me, daddy.
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It's a tremendous and a magical gift.
link |
We already have so many stories to tell,
link |
there are far too many to list.
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But I want to thank you again this day
link |
with a very big happy birthday to you
link |
and to tell you just a few more things
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that I knew in my heart to be true.
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That I love you, daddy,
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with all of your wrongs and your rights.
link |
That you're ahead of our family
link |
and you've kept us all bound tight.
link |
That you have a honest love in your heart
link |
for God and all mankind.
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And you truly do believe in yourself
link |
when you say it will all be fine.
link |
I know you will be there to catch me
link |
if ever I waver a slip
link |
and I know I'd want you as captain on any sinking ship.
link |
I also know a new chapter is written.
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It's almost time to move on.
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It's time to sail another sea
link |
and to witness a brand new dawn.
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It'd be good to see you at the helm again
link |
as you point out our destination,
link |
the laugh and dance on the upper deckers
link |
while the boat glides through.
link |
It'd be good to see you on the go
link |
as I know you like to be
link |
and to know you can open any door without any key.
link |
But while we revel in our days together,
link |
we will know better than to hurry
link |
because as you told me many times,
link |
life is an incredible journey.
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Wow, that's beautiful.
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Roger, I'm really honored that you would take the time
link |
to visit me in Texas and to sit down and talk with me.
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Thank you so much, Roger.
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Thanks so much, Mary. Thank you.
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Thank you, it was a pleasure.
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It's been a real pleasure.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Roger Reeves
link |
and thank you to Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN,
link |
Four Sigmatic and 8sleep.
link |
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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And now let me leave you with some words
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from Pablo Escobar.
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All empires are created of blood and fire.
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Thank you for listening.
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I hope to see you next time.