# How a Green Beret Smuggled Carlos Ghosn out of Japan | Mike Taylor (throwback ep)

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 15 Jan 2026, 2 h 18 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/69448329/mike_taylor_throwback_ep_1.mp3

ORIGINAL AIRDATE - 6/9/23 Michael Taylor is a Special Forces veteran who had a hard-earned reputation for taking on dicey assignments. Over the years, Taylor had been hired by parents to rescue abducted children. He went undercover for the FBI to sting a Massachusetts drug gang. He is most well known for smuggling Carlos Ghosn (former chairman of Nissan) out of Japan. Grab Vitamin 1 here:⬇️ https://www.drinkvitamin1.com Today's Sponsors: The Lite Sleeper⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED, US MANUFACTURED) the perfect addition for the light backpacker, ground sleeper, or prepper/survivalist. https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse click the link to get The Lite Sleeper and get 10% off your first order! https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone,
[0:12] Speaker 1: welcome to episode two hundred and fourteen of The Team House.
[0:15] Speaker 1: I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Our guest tonight
[0:18] Speaker 1: in studio is Mike Taylor. Mike served in Special Forces
[0:23] Speaker 1: number of different assignments in Europe, in Central America, in Lebanon,
[0:28] Speaker 1: left the Army, went and became an entrepreneur, did some
[0:32] Speaker 1: undercover work with federal law enforcement, even got involved in
[0:35] Speaker 1: repatriating children who'd been kidnapped from the United States and
[0:38] Speaker 1: brought overseas. Spent time in Iraq as a security contractor,
[0:43] Speaker 1: time in Afghanistan as an intelligence contractor. He also probably
[0:48] Speaker 1: most famously involved in the Carlos Goon affair, the Nissan
[0:52] Speaker 1: CEO who was arrested in Japan and then brought out
[0:56] Speaker 1: of Japan to Turkey and then onto his home in Lebanon.
[1:01] Speaker 1: And you know, I was talking to Mike when he
[1:03] Speaker 1: got back from that and all the way up until
[1:05] Speaker 1: you were extradited to Japan and spent what nearly two
[1:09] Speaker 1: years in prison altogether. So this is Mike his first
[1:14] Speaker 1: time breaking his silence really after all of that went down.
[1:17] Speaker 1: So Mike, really appreciate you joining us here tonight.
[1:20] Speaker 2: Great being with you guys.
[1:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a real privilege. So Mike, we you're a
[1:25] Speaker 3: superhero obviously. What's your origin story? What like led you
[1:30] Speaker 3: to the military? How'd you grow up?
[1:31] Speaker 1: And please remember Toike and share and subscribe to the channel, right,
[1:34] Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
[1:37] Speaker 2: What led me to the military? Well, my dad was
[1:40] Speaker 2: an ASA Army Security Agency would later became Army Intelligence Service.
[1:46] Speaker 2: And you know, we lived on a different basis where
[1:49] Speaker 2: those guys were in the school for ASA and the
[1:51] Speaker 2: most code and blah blah blah A code breakers. And
[1:57] Speaker 2: I hated the Army. I hated the military because most
[2:00] Speaker 2: of those guys were dorksta. Remember I'd go to the gym.
[2:03] Speaker 2: Where's the kid's gonna hang out in the military base?
[2:05] Speaker 2: You go to the gym, and anytime we needed money
[2:08] Speaker 2: for lunch, we'd go down and buy a sub and
[2:10] Speaker 2: a soda. We'd play two of these dorky guys from
[2:14] Speaker 2: ASA and basketball two on two who we're playing for
[2:17] Speaker 2: each for two bucks. Two bucks buys as a sub
[2:19] Speaker 2: and a soda, so we know we're gonna win. We
[2:22] Speaker 2: didn't have a penny in our pocket, so we're gonna
[2:24] Speaker 2: have to fight if we lost, but we're fighting do
[2:27] Speaker 2: dorky GI, so yeah, we're gonna win. So we went
[2:30] Speaker 2: her money. I hated them, and then up on for Devons,
[2:33] Speaker 2: they bumped in these other guys that looked fairly normal,
[2:35] Speaker 2: some had long hair and good guys, and they're helping
[2:38] Speaker 2: us with lift in and telling jokes and stuff, and
[2:41] Speaker 2: found out they were Special Forces guys. So long story
[2:45] Speaker 2: short is I was due to go to college and
[2:47] Speaker 2: play football, and at the last minute I said, no,
[2:51] Speaker 2: I'm gonna try out for SF because through the SF
[2:54] Speaker 2: guys I knew. In the gym, they found out that
[2:58] Speaker 2: they were running like an X RAY program, which means
[3:00] Speaker 2: you could try out right from high school. They were
[3:02] Speaker 2: doing it back then, back in seventy nine, and I
[3:05] Speaker 2: happened to be lucky enough to fit into that period
[3:08] Speaker 2: of time where I went right from high school in
[3:11] Speaker 2: went the basic ait jump school, and write the pre phase.
[3:14] Speaker 2: And I don't know how it is now, but pre
[3:16] Speaker 2: phase back then, they're trying to wash everybody out. They
[3:19] Speaker 2: didn't give a damn and and ended up making it through.
[3:23] Speaker 2: And one of my classmates was Gary Gordon, God Rest
[3:26] Speaker 2: the Soul Medal of Honor winner from Somalia. So yeah,
[3:31] Speaker 2: in two thirds of our graduating class came right from
[3:35] Speaker 2: high school. So we used to tease you know, the
[3:38] Speaker 2: older guys when we got into teams. Yeah, at school, right,
[3:41] Speaker 2: that hard because two thirds of our graduating class came
[3:44] Speaker 2: right from high school. Last year we were in high school.
[3:46] Speaker 2: This year we're green berets.
[3:47] Speaker 1: I'm sure that much.
[3:48] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we did. They they didn't go over very
[3:50] Speaker 2: well what we had to tease them, you know how
[3:52] Speaker 2: it is. So that's how I ended up in the military. Yeah.
[3:55] Speaker 3: And then what was like, what was it like when
[3:59] Speaker 3: you first got Well, first off, what what mos did
[4:02] Speaker 3: you go through?
[4:02] Speaker 2: What originally eighteen Charlie? Well back then was twelve B.
[4:06] Speaker 2: They converted to eighteen charlie. Yeah, so okay. And then
[4:09] Speaker 2: what was it like when you first got to your team?
[4:12] Speaker 2: Oh see, I went to uh, I went to the
[4:16] Speaker 2: Pig team. We had Colonel Potter. The group commented, and
[4:21] Speaker 2: they call it the Potter Imperial Guard Team because they
[4:23] Speaker 2: got all the good missions. And this team was stacked.
[4:26] Speaker 2: It was all sixes and sevens and the eight as
[4:29] Speaker 2: a team. Sergeant I was a Halo team, the green
[4:33] Speaker 2: Light team, and so I was the junior demo man
[4:36] Speaker 2: at first, and it was great because everybody there was.
[4:40] Speaker 2: The next closest guy to me was an E six
[4:42] Speaker 2: and that was Jeff Hanley, who ended up becoming one
[4:45] Speaker 2: of the Golden Knights and then the Chopper pilot. But
[4:47] Speaker 2: just just and it came from the Ragier Battalion, so
[4:50] Speaker 2: just a wealth of knowledge and experience, and it was
[4:53] Speaker 2: great because those were you know, as you know, those
[4:55] Speaker 2: are my teachers.
[4:56] Speaker 1: Then that's pretty rare for a brand new guy to
[4:58] Speaker 1: end up on a green Light team because you had
[5:00] Speaker 1: to be both Scuba and Halo, right.
[5:02] Speaker 2: No, only Halo. Oh really, yeah, only Halo. Yeah.
[5:06] Speaker 3: So for you know, we haven't really talked about green
[5:08] Speaker 3: Light teas very much, can you And it's really not
[5:10] Speaker 3: talked about that much at all. Can you tell us
[5:12] Speaker 3: what that was?
[5:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's essentially you know, in this part's been in
[5:16] Speaker 2: a newspaper, so there's nothing classified about it. It's the
[5:19] Speaker 2: SADUM device. It's a special atomic demolition munition. SADEM is
[5:23] Speaker 2: the acronym for it, and that's one of the things
[5:26] Speaker 2: that we had in our tools to use in case
[5:30] Speaker 2: of war.
[5:32] Speaker 3: And how fast you have to run to get away
[5:35] Speaker 3: from that device if you jump it in.
[5:38] Speaker 2: I don't know how fast is a new So yeah,
[5:42] Speaker 2: we you know, the older guys are funny about it
[5:44] Speaker 2: because they said, look, you got the least experience. You're
[5:46] Speaker 2: a devil man. You've been through the school. So your
[5:49] Speaker 2: ass is going to be the one to push in
[5:51] Speaker 2: the button and we're going to be far away. So yeah,
[5:55] Speaker 2: that was my job, pushed the button.
[5:57] Speaker 1: What were those training exercises? Like, like I've heard some
[6:00] Speaker 1: like wild stories about well we have.
[6:02] Speaker 2: To take uh you know, guns and Amma with us
[6:06] Speaker 2: live everything live, because you got to protect that device.
[6:09] Speaker 2: And you know, the worst part of it is jumping
[6:11] Speaker 2: it in. You know, somebody says, well I got to
[6:14] Speaker 2: jump the device. You're not jumping the device. The device
[6:17] Speaker 2: is jumping you. I've got over three thousand free falls
[6:21] Speaker 2: and that's still a major league paying to jump that thing.
[6:25] Speaker 2: It's brutal and you end up sitting sitting on it
[6:28] Speaker 2: falling in free fall. You don't you're not flat and
[6:31] Speaker 2: stable like you should be. So and then all your
[6:35] Speaker 2: other gear is divvied up. So all of a sudden,
[6:38] Speaker 2: you're a refugee because my gears. I gotta go look
[6:41] Speaker 2: for my uh my, my warmings, my snivel gears to
[6:44] Speaker 2: the junior commo. Man. I gotta get my socks from
[6:46] Speaker 2: you know, the medic and I got to get one
[6:48] Speaker 2: of my c rations from the weapons guy, you know.
[6:51] Speaker 2: So it's yeah, being a young guy in a team
[6:55] Speaker 2: with the with the green light missions not fun.
[6:57] Speaker 3: Was it feasible u to to move the satom like
[7:02] Speaker 3: once you jumped it in or wherever you landed, was
[7:04] Speaker 3: that where it was just gonna have to No?
[7:06] Speaker 2: No, no, no, we hump it really? Oh yeah, it's
[7:09] Speaker 2: not that heavy?
[7:09] Speaker 3: Oh really?
[7:10] Speaker 2: Yea interesting. I don't know if the weights classified, so
[7:12] Speaker 2: I'm not gonna say yeah, but you can blame me.
[7:15] Speaker 2: We've all humped a lot heavier rucksacks. Oh yeah, much heavier.
[7:20] Speaker 3: Interesting? And then was it well I don't want to yeah, okay,
[7:25] Speaker 3: I'm a Was it manual or did you could you
[7:29] Speaker 3: like get away from it?
[7:30] Speaker 2: And everything back then was manual? Yeah?
[7:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you have to actually punch the coat
[7:36] Speaker 1: into the device and hit enter and pull ass.
[7:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, and and their clocks we were trained on or
[7:43] Speaker 2: are routinely continuously historically off, so you know, the little
[7:52] Speaker 2: old army watchers they would give to you once in
[7:54] Speaker 2: a while. Uh, they kept better time than this device was.
[7:59] Speaker 2: That's how bad was.
[8:01] Speaker 1: It's a little iffy.
[8:03] Speaker 2: What are you gonna do? Yeah?
[8:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, what I mean? Obviously that was a very secret
[8:08] Speaker 3: program at the time. What did like, did you realize
[8:12] Speaker 3: when you got picked for that team sort of that
[8:14] Speaker 3: you were being put into this this special access.
[8:17] Speaker 2: Did you know? No, I had no idea whatsoever. I
[8:20] Speaker 2: had no idea. I knew it was a Halo team.
[8:22] Speaker 2: I was jacked about that, even though Halo School was
[8:25] Speaker 2: closed at the time. Too many guys were dying and
[8:27] Speaker 2: Halo School so they shut it down. And then you know,
[8:31] Speaker 2: after I got there, I get briefed and whatnot, and
[8:33] Speaker 2: so that was that was, Yeah, it's an eye opener,
[8:36] Speaker 2: and yeah, wow, this is great. Does it get any
[8:38] Speaker 2: better than this? So but yeah, and then I had
[8:42] Speaker 2: to wait to get to Halo School. Although you know,
[8:44] Speaker 2: these guys are all got thousands of jumps. So I
[8:47] Speaker 2: was jumping with the Parachute Club and we'd go out
[8:50] Speaker 2: and do our Halo drops at a helicopters or see
[8:53] Speaker 2: one thirties or whatever without oxygen. So they had me
[8:57] Speaker 2: doing that before I even went to Halo School. And
[8:59] Speaker 2: then here the school was shut down for I don't know,
[9:01] Speaker 2: maybe a year or so, and then they opened it
[9:03] Speaker 2: up where we were using the wind tunnel at right
[9:06] Speaker 2: Patterson Air Force Base before we had our own, and
[9:09] Speaker 2: they run us through that, which I thought the wind
[9:12] Speaker 2: tunnel was the hardest part of free fall. And then
[9:16] Speaker 2: after that we'd fly back to Brag And when we're
[9:18] Speaker 2: flying back to Brag our first jump at twelve five
[9:21] Speaker 2: hundred feet was flying back to Brag. So, but Halo
[9:24] Speaker 2: School is the absolute gentleman's course. You know, you lay
[9:27] Speaker 2: down on the table most of the time where you're
[9:29] Speaker 2: going to wind tunnel. It's great, good times. Yeah. Yeah.
[9:33] Speaker 1: And after your time on the green Light team, you
[9:36] Speaker 1: got did a couple of depointments down to Central America.
[9:38] Speaker 2: Right, No, that was early on, and no, actually I
[9:42] Speaker 2: didn't I didn't get to go to the places I
[9:45] Speaker 2: wanted to go because Seventh Group ended up taking it over,
[9:49] Speaker 2: and at that time, Seventh Group was fighting for all
[9:51] Speaker 2: those and our group commander at the time, Potter, was
[9:54] Speaker 2: fighting and we ended up although we had you know,
[9:57] Speaker 2: Russia and Norway and skin and Navy we ended up
[10:00] Speaker 2: in Beirut, so we didn't get to go to Central America.
[10:05] Speaker 2: I think maybe one time, but you know, all of
[10:08] Speaker 2: our time was spent over in the Middle East and
[10:11] Speaker 2: we're a winter warfare.
[10:13] Speaker 3: So it was Tenth Grad were they like, were the
[10:16] Speaker 3: groups really established, Like Tenth Group was Europe and Wash
[10:19] Speaker 3: at least. Oh yeah, but you guys were still doing that.
[10:21] Speaker 2: We don't know how it happened. Yeah, we don't know
[10:23] Speaker 2: how it happened. We heard that, you know, somebody down
[10:25] Speaker 2: in the Pentagon threw this on the table and group
[10:28] Speaker 2: commanders were fighting over and Colonel Potter ended up getting it.
[10:31] Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I believe the division happened.
[10:35] Speaker 1: It was like political considerations that had to do with
[10:38] Speaker 1: we didn't want the same SF guys going back and
[10:41] Speaker 1: forth from Israel to Arab countries and then back again.
[10:44] Speaker 1: That there's some security concerns. So I think that's why
[10:46] Speaker 1: Tenth Group ended up taking over like Israel Lebanon for
[10:49] Speaker 1: a little while.
[10:50] Speaker 2: Interesting, I didn't know. I believe that's why that came
[10:52] Speaker 2: about like that, but it came out of the blue.
[10:54] Speaker 2: You know, we're up in above the Arctic Circle for
[10:57] Speaker 2: ninety days, at a time, December, January, February. We don't
[11:00] Speaker 2: see light. It's anywhere from forty to seventy below. You're
[11:04] Speaker 2: constantly skiing, you're constantly moving. We're doing our best to
[11:08] Speaker 2: make snow caves, and you know we're dreaming of warm weather, right,
[11:11] Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, you know, you get
[11:14] Speaker 2: a flash message. You got a ten digit grid, go
[11:16] Speaker 2: here for an evacuation. Oh what could this be? Oh,
[11:21] Speaker 2: we're going to war. Okay, great, we're going to war
[11:23] Speaker 2: instead of playing with the Russians in the in the
[11:25] Speaker 2: gru and the KGB on the border. We're going to war.
[11:28] Speaker 2: And then we find out, you guys in big trouble,
[11:32] Speaker 2: you're going to Bay Route. What are you kidding me?
[11:34] Speaker 2: This is the best weather on earth. Yeah, send us please.
[11:38] Speaker 2: So it was pretty nice to go from the Arctic
[11:41] Speaker 2: freezing at you know, forty to seventy below to oh,
[11:44] Speaker 2: you guys are going to Bay Route.
[11:45] Speaker 1: So what was like that? Like, like you, I think
[11:47] Speaker 1: you told me once you were on the first NTT too.
[11:50] Speaker 2: Yeah. They put a composite team together pretty much because
[11:52] Speaker 2: we had a few spots on our team. You know,
[11:55] Speaker 2: back then, teams weren't at full strength. So we're missing
[11:59] Speaker 2: a couple team members. I think we're missing a medic.
[12:03] Speaker 2: We're always missing medics. You never have enough medics. But
[12:06] Speaker 2: so we're missing a couple of people. So they threw
[12:08] Speaker 2: some people with us and we ended up having a
[12:10] Speaker 2: composite team and went over in the first MTT and
[12:13] Speaker 2: it was it was really eye opening. You know. We
[12:16] Speaker 2: spent about three months in isolation preparing for it, which,
[12:21] Speaker 2: of course by then we knew everything about the country,
[12:23] Speaker 2: the people, so on and so forth. Three months a
[12:25] Speaker 2: long time to study such a small country, but it
[12:29] Speaker 2: was a very dynamic country because everybody and their brother
[12:31] Speaker 2: was in there making problems and fighting and backstabbing and
[12:35] Speaker 2: the art of the quadruple deal and so on and
[12:37] Speaker 2: so forth. Everything that you could think of was going on.
[12:39] Speaker 2: It was there, and it was a terrorist capital of
[12:42] Speaker 2: the world.
[12:43] Speaker 1: And what year was this that you guys went in there?
[12:45] Speaker 2: Eighty three?
[12:45] Speaker 1: Wow?
[12:46] Speaker 2: Yeah. What happened was in September fourteenth, nineteen eighty two,
[12:49] Speaker 2: is when their president, Legbashir Jamaio was assassinated. And after
[12:54] Speaker 2: that they had the massacres of Sovereign Shatila in the
[12:56] Speaker 2: Palestinian camps. And then you know, it's just quite common
[13:02] Speaker 2: over there. But sher Jamiel was assassinated and his brother
[13:08] Speaker 2: ended up taking over for him to be the president.
[13:10] Speaker 2: He wasn't elected, but he was the brother. That's how
[13:13] Speaker 2: it goes there, you know, That's how it is, right so,
[13:17] Speaker 2: and it was after that that you know, Marines were
[13:20] Speaker 2: in right away, pretty early after this obigntion Shatila stuff,
[13:24] Speaker 2: because they were there as peacekeepers, which I never believe
[13:29] Speaker 2: in sending our marines. And as peacekeepers, you know, marines
[13:32] Speaker 2: are there to destroy things. That's it, you know, bring
[13:34] Speaker 2: to bring the heat and let's make some order and
[13:37] Speaker 2: discipline here. That's what the Marines are for. So I
[13:40] Speaker 2: felt bad, horrible that you know, they're sitting at the
[13:42] Speaker 2: Beayroote Airport and they're getting sniped that constantly, and you know,
[13:46] Speaker 2: random mortar attacks and rocket attacks and they're not allowed
[13:50] Speaker 2: to fight back because the State Department's got their nose
[13:52] Speaker 2: in it. And you know, anytime the State Department has
[13:55] Speaker 2: given orders to the military, there's going to be problems.
[13:58] Speaker 2: And hence October twenty third, nineteen eighty three, when the
[14:02] Speaker 2: BLT got blown up, So.
[14:05] Speaker 1: Walk us through, you know, like landing in Beyroute for
[14:08] Speaker 1: the first time. What what your mission was?
[14:10] Speaker 2: What you were Yeah, first of all, we went in
[14:12] Speaker 2: in the civilian aircraft, civilian clothes. It was all undercover
[14:16] Speaker 2: until we got there. And we got there, you know, intentionally,
[14:21] Speaker 2: like three in the morning. The airport's closed, is shut down,
[14:23] Speaker 2: but you know, they opened it for us. So we
[14:26] Speaker 2: ended up flying in with a twa flight out of
[14:29] Speaker 2: JFK and we stopped in Germany. I think we stopped
[14:33] Speaker 2: in Frankfurt just to refuel. Ended up going in and
[14:36] Speaker 2: we're on a on an army Lebanese army bus, a
[14:39] Speaker 2: little bus probably holds about twenty people. Driving through downtown
[14:44] Speaker 2: Bay Route at three or four in the morning, and
[14:46] Speaker 2: all you see is ruins all over the place. It
[14:48] Speaker 2: looks like something out of the movies. And I would
[14:53] Speaker 2: say a good fifty sixty percent of the buildings or
[14:57] Speaker 2: were damaged and destroyed, and it just like the Apoca
[15:01] Speaker 2: Apocalypse had come through. But again that was the result
[15:04] Speaker 2: of I don't know how many years of civil war
[15:06] Speaker 2: at that time, but they ended up having about seventeen
[15:08] Speaker 2: years of civil war. In addition, it was you know,
[15:12] Speaker 2: the Israelis had come in and started attack the Palestinians
[15:17] Speaker 2: to get them out because the Palestinians were firing across
[15:19] Speaker 2: the border and the Lebanese Army wasn't sufficient to provide
[15:24] Speaker 2: security to stop the Palestinians from there from being there,
[15:27] Speaker 2: So that whole mess just boiled over in nineteen eighty two,
[15:32] Speaker 2: the summer of eighty two, we saw the Israelis invade
[15:35] Speaker 2: and up forcing the Palestinians out. So that's what we
[15:39] Speaker 2: went into. As you know, a young twenty year old kid,
[15:42] Speaker 2: it was interesting. It was your job to the training
[15:45] Speaker 2: mission was for the Lebanese Army. Yeah, the primary mission was,
[15:48] Speaker 2: you know, the cover of it was to train the
[15:50] Speaker 2: Lebanese Army, which we did. We trained the Lebanese Army
[15:54] Speaker 2: and they were getting all kinds of shipments of brand
[15:56] Speaker 2: new gear, brand new one to one threes coming in,
[16:00] Speaker 2: new tanks and you know, brand new M sixty, brand new.
[16:04] Speaker 2: We've never seen such new equipment before and it was
[16:07] Speaker 2: being shipped in there. It was great. They still had
[16:09] Speaker 2: the transportation grease on the APC's that were going in,
[16:13] Speaker 2: so it was pretty interesting. And you know, we had
[16:16] Speaker 2: you know, two full teams of SF then. That was
[16:19] Speaker 2: great because you know, most of the guys were older
[16:21] Speaker 2: and had a lot of experience. So yeah, it was
[16:24] Speaker 2: a great time.
[16:25] Speaker 1: And so you said that was the cover mission, Well
[16:27] Speaker 1: it was the real mission.
[16:28] Speaker 2: Oh. We were doing all kinds of stuff, we name it.
[16:29] Speaker 2: We were getting all kinds of stuff. But you know,
[16:31] Speaker 2: we had, you know, a lot of problems back then
[16:34] Speaker 2: because the Palestinians were actually providing us with good security,
[16:38] Speaker 2: good intel, So they were given us a lot of intel.
[16:41] Speaker 2: That's why you didn't have many problems with anybody messing
[16:44] Speaker 2: with Americans. But soon as the Palestinians were outed, you know,
[16:48] Speaker 2: we started having some real problems. April eighteenth, nineteen eighty three,
[16:51] Speaker 2: our embassy blew up. We lost I think seventeen Americans,
[16:55] Speaker 2: sixty three people in total, most Lebanese that work with
[16:59] Speaker 2: us and people out side. I was on my way
[17:01] Speaker 2: to a meeting there at one o'clock and I had
[17:03] Speaker 2: stopped to get some orange juice from the kids pushing
[17:07] Speaker 2: the carts of orange juice. Otherwise I would have been
[17:09] Speaker 2: in there at one o'clock, So I just missed that one.
[17:12] Speaker 2: So you heard the bang, I was across the streets. Yeah,
[17:16] Speaker 2: but we lost a lot of good Americans. We lost
[17:18] Speaker 2: Bobby Ames and the staff of other guys there. You know,
[17:21] Speaker 2: he was the region chief of the CIA, a wonderful
[17:25] Speaker 2: human being, and just you know, that hurt us badly.
[17:28] Speaker 2: That hurt us badly, and again we never had those
[17:30] Speaker 2: problems before. When the Palestinians were there provided us with information.
[17:35] Speaker 2: And then after that it was just a few months later.
[17:38] Speaker 2: That was April eighteenth, nineteen eighty three October twenty third,
[17:41] Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three when the marine Barris got blown up
[17:44] Speaker 2: and the French Bearriss got hit and blown up also simultaneously.
[17:47] Speaker 2: So yeah, that wasn't That wasn't a good time. And
[17:51] Speaker 2: you know, it's interesting. There's the show out now by
[17:54] Speaker 2: Peter Bergen called The Ghost of Bea Route. It's on Showtime. Brilliant,
[18:01] Speaker 2: brilliant show. I've only seen some of the trailers, and
[18:04] Speaker 2: Peter Bergen's a really really intelligent guy and really wired
[18:08] Speaker 2: in so if he's a producer for it, it's got
[18:11] Speaker 2: to be good. So I'm looking forward to watching that.
[18:13] Speaker 2: And it's about that error and about Imad Mugnay, who's
[18:17] Speaker 2: known as the number one terraces in the world, you know,
[18:19] Speaker 2: used to be, but we got to him he's dead,
[18:23] Speaker 2: So yeah, it's about that time frame.
[18:25] Speaker 3: Also, what was it about the Palestinians that they were
[18:29] Speaker 3: providing intelligence? Were they sort of in competition with some
[18:32] Speaker 3: of the other Islamic groups in the area or yeah,
[18:35] Speaker 3: they were.
[18:36] Speaker 2: And they weren't. They weren't in a sense that they
[18:39] Speaker 2: were looked down upon because one, they're not Lebanese and
[18:42] Speaker 2: they could never be Lebanese. The law is such that
[18:45] Speaker 2: even if a Palaestinnian marries a Lebanese woman, a Palestinian
[18:48] Speaker 2: man marries a Lebanese woman, you can't have the passport.
[18:51] Speaker 2: So no foreign man, any country anywhere that marries a
[18:56] Speaker 2: Lebanese citizen can have the citizenship. It doesn't work that way.
[19:00] Speaker 2: So that's one of the things that the Palestinians were
[19:02] Speaker 2: always you know, under their craw about. But number two,
[19:05] Speaker 2: the Palestinians there were tons of them. They had numbers,
[19:09] Speaker 2: and they were better organized, they were better trained, and
[19:12] Speaker 2: they had better intel than the local Amal militia or
[19:15] Speaker 2: any other militias there. And you know, in time, the
[19:20] Speaker 2: Palestinians started having their own divisive problems with the you know,
[19:25] Speaker 2: different people wanting to split off, like George Habash wanted
[19:28] Speaker 2: to split off and create his own group. He thought
[19:30] Speaker 2: he was smarter and better than their fat So then
[19:33] Speaker 2: they had started having their problems, but a lot of
[19:35] Speaker 2: those really didn't come until after nineteen eighty two when
[19:38] Speaker 2: israelis invaded. So and you know, and again that goes
[19:42] Speaker 2: back to the history that you know, everybody thinks that
[19:44] Speaker 2: they went from Israel slash Palestine and it got kicked out,
[19:48] Speaker 2: went right to Lebanon. They did it, And it's amazing
[19:52] Speaker 2: how many people that live in that region of the
[19:53] Speaker 2: world don't know that they actually went from Israel slash
[19:56] Speaker 2: Palestine over to Jordan. And it was King who saying
[20:00] Speaker 2: they kicked them out and they went to Beyrout. So
[20:04] Speaker 2: but yeah, they dominated Beirut. It was the Palestinians.
[20:08] Speaker 1: Looking back on that experience, I mean, I know you
[20:10] Speaker 1: sort of developed, like over time, sort of affinity for Lebanon,
[20:13] Speaker 1: and you know, we're in the language and a lot
[20:15] Speaker 1: of things. But I mean, what did you make looking
[20:18] Speaker 1: back on it of the American military presence there, be
[20:21] Speaker 1: it Special Forces or Marines or whoever. I mean, do
[20:23] Speaker 1: you think it was wrong for us to be there?
[20:25] Speaker 1: Do you think we had a potential to help.
[20:28] Speaker 2: No, I don't think it was wrong for us to
[20:29] Speaker 2: be there for the most part, like training the army.
[20:32] Speaker 2: Still it was very good and I think to a
[20:34] Speaker 2: degree that's still happening. I think that's very wise for
[20:37] Speaker 2: us to do. We got to keep a hand in that,
[20:40] Speaker 2: and we got to do that for obvious reasons. And
[20:42] Speaker 2: obvious reasons are one, you got Hesbala there, so we
[20:45] Speaker 2: don't want Hesbala taken over the army. We don't agree
[20:48] Speaker 2: with them. And number two, you have the Syrians that
[20:50] Speaker 2: are always looking to have influence and they've actually you know,
[20:54] Speaker 2: occupied Lebanon for many years. It wasn't until President Bush
[20:59] Speaker 2: the Sun was in and he got them to leave.
[21:02] Speaker 2: But Haffas Asade was the smart, you know Syrian leader
[21:06] Speaker 2: for I don't know how many decades, but he was
[21:09] Speaker 2: the real brains behind it, and he's the one that
[21:11] Speaker 2: ended up having his claws into Lebanon. And they were
[21:13] Speaker 2: draining and the resources from Lebanon, especially from the port
[21:17] Speaker 2: because you know, the Port of Beirut is a deep
[21:20] Speaker 2: water port and they can do a lot of commerce.
[21:22] Speaker 2: So the Syrians came in and you know, as a
[21:25] Speaker 2: favor to help keep peace between the Lebanese and the
[21:28] Speaker 2: civil wars from battling each other, which was effective at first,
[21:32] Speaker 2: and then they stopped fighting and the Lebanese citizens realized that, Okay,
[21:37] Speaker 2: we may have a different religion, but it's okay, we
[21:39] Speaker 2: can get along. Of course you can get along because
[21:41] Speaker 2: they have a weird dynamic. You go over to Africa
[21:44] Speaker 2: in the Lebanese, regardless of the religion, they're having cookouts,
[21:48] Speaker 2: They're going to each other's weddings. It's no problem. It's
[21:51] Speaker 2: only in there in the country when they're battling. So yeah,
[21:56] Speaker 2: it was there's always something going on. Was a very
[22:00] Speaker 2: fluid situation. I think that we should stay there training
[22:04] Speaker 2: the army. I don't think we should have had our
[22:07] Speaker 2: marines there as peacekeepers. That's the part I didn't agree with.
[22:11] Speaker 2: And again, marines aren't peacekeepers. If you you know, let's
[22:15] Speaker 2: say positively needed destroyed overnight, send the marines. Don't bullshit
[22:20] Speaker 2: around with having them stand there and you know we
[22:23] Speaker 2: be nice. Marines aren't nice, right, Marines aren't made to
[22:26] Speaker 2: be nice. They're they're killing machine. Let him kill. But no,
[22:30] Speaker 2: they shouldn't be peacekeepers. And we ended up losing a
[22:32] Speaker 2: whole bunch of them because they're putting in a position
[22:35] Speaker 2: where the State Department was controlling them.
[22:38] Speaker 1: Dave, you want to give a quick shout out for
[22:40] Speaker 1: our sponsor for this podcast.
[22:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, So, anybody who's been in the military knows that
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[24:18] Speaker 1: So after Lebanon you got out of the army in
[24:21] Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, I mean, before we move on to
[24:23] Speaker 1: there are any other interesting army episodes that you'd like
[24:26] Speaker 1: to highlight?
[24:27] Speaker 2: No, not really. There's always somebody I told you I
[24:30] Speaker 2: saw the other day. You guys had Nick Brockhausen on. Yeah,
[24:33] Speaker 2: that's the guy that's got the interesting stories.
[24:35] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, No, Nick's awesome. Yeah, we've had him
[24:39] Speaker 1: and Jeff on a couple of times.
[24:41] Speaker 2: Jeff's another one.
[24:42] Speaker 1: We'll have to do it a couple we'll have to.
[24:43] Speaker 2: Do it again.
[24:44] Speaker 1: So what what led up to you deciding to leave
[24:48] Speaker 1: the military in eighty seven.
[24:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about going to work for another
[24:55] Speaker 2: government agency at the time, and because of my language,
[24:59] Speaker 2: that was you know, a big plus, so that was interesting.
[25:04] Speaker 2: So that was the path I was going down. And
[25:06] Speaker 2: then I ended up back in Lebanon, and you know,
[25:10] Speaker 2: because I could speak a language, I was working in
[25:12] Speaker 2: the civilian side. So I ended up doing some more
[25:16] Speaker 2: training and things like that and getting into contracting, and
[25:20] Speaker 2: then you know, one thing led to the next. I
[25:23] Speaker 2: had a security company. I was in the Special Forces
[25:25] Speaker 2: Reserves at the time and then came back, was raising
[25:28] Speaker 2: a family, and I opened a security company. And the
[25:31] Speaker 2: originally our first customer was Allie North because he had
[25:36] Speaker 2: he had a threat against them from some people in
[25:38] Speaker 2: the Middle East, legitimate threat and you know, he was
[25:42] Speaker 2: writing his book at the time and he had gone
[25:44] Speaker 2: through the Iran contrary issues and so then he started
[25:48] Speaker 2: the book tour and he went to Europe with it
[25:50] Speaker 2: as well, so we had to provide him with some
[25:53] Speaker 2: real protection. So that's how the security company got it started.
[25:58] Speaker 1: And there were correct me if I'm wrong, but a
[26:01] Speaker 1: couple like close calls with Ali while you were traveling
[26:04] Speaker 1: with him.
[26:05] Speaker 2: As far as attempts, oh, but there's always somebody trying
[26:08] Speaker 2: to get to him. I don't think they were really
[26:10] Speaker 2: these were trying to kill him, but he had legitimate
[26:13] Speaker 2: threats on him, and you know, it was sickening to
[26:16] Speaker 2: see some of the politicians grilling him saying why did
[26:19] Speaker 2: you have a security fence and why did you have
[26:22] Speaker 2: a security alarm at your house? Oh? I remember that. Yeah,
[26:25] Speaker 2: come on, he's out there doing America's work and he
[26:27] Speaker 2: had legitimate threats against him by legitimate terroists. Was there
[26:31] Speaker 2: was also he also is another element of crazies out
[26:34] Speaker 2: there that don't know how to kill anybody. Wouldn't kill anybody,
[26:37] Speaker 2: and it would probably puke on themselves if they saw
[26:39] Speaker 2: a dead person, but they would still try to do
[26:41] Speaker 2: embarrassing things to him. Right.
[26:43] Speaker 1: I remember, and if my memory serves me right, that
[26:46] Speaker 1: during the Iran contry hearings they were grilling him about
[26:49] Speaker 1: that he used government funds to have an arm system
[26:52] Speaker 1: put in his home and that was like a point
[26:55] Speaker 1: of controversy whether or not that was appropriate.
[26:57] Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if it was government funds or
[26:58] Speaker 2: funds from the the sale of the Hawk missiles to
[27:02] Speaker 2: the Iranians at one hundred percent profit, So I don't know,
[27:06] Speaker 2: But who cares where I'm from. Well, you know, the
[27:09] Speaker 2: guy's got a legitimate threat. He's doing work for the government, US,
[27:13] Speaker 2: the American people. He's not doing work for himself. He's
[27:16] Speaker 2: not enriching himself. So yeah, he needed protection.
[27:20] Speaker 1: So as time went on, how did that security company
[27:22] Speaker 1: kind of expand and sprawl out.
[27:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, one of the early bigger projects we
[27:30] Speaker 2: got to do was work on the vulnerability assessment for
[27:34] Speaker 2: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey right in
[27:36] Speaker 2: New York. It was after the February nineteen ninety three
[27:39] Speaker 2: car bombing in the World Trade Center, and then we
[27:42] Speaker 2: got the subcontract from a much larger company to come
[27:45] Speaker 2: in and do essentially a vulnerability assessment. They were trying
[27:49] Speaker 2: to figure it out. They had a bunch of former
[27:50] Speaker 2: CIA and Secret Service guys and some brilliant brains and
[27:54] Speaker 2: what they did, but they don't know how to target something.
[27:57] Speaker 2: So they asked for the SF guy to come in
[28:00] Speaker 2: and and I look at it from a terrorist perspective.
[28:04] Speaker 2: You know, they've got the George Washington Bridge, they've got
[28:07] Speaker 2: the JFK Airport, and you know, in Special Forces, that's
[28:11] Speaker 2: what we do. We we're the nightmare for the other people,
[28:14] Speaker 2: you know, when they stay awake at night, it's because
[28:16] Speaker 2: of guys like us. We're gonna find out where their
[28:18] Speaker 2: vulnerabilities are, we're gonna exploit those vulnerabilities, and we're gonna
[28:21] Speaker 2: kill a lot of people or put them out of
[28:23] Speaker 2: business or or both. So that's what we did here.
[28:26] Speaker 2: And then we just turn it around so we can
[28:29] Speaker 2: mitigate it and prevent it from happening. So that was
[28:31] Speaker 2: one of our biggest contracts to date. And uh, that
[28:35] Speaker 2: was a good one because we got to spend you know,
[28:37] Speaker 2: I spent about six seven months here in New York City, uh,
[28:41] Speaker 2: done by the World Trade Center work and we did
[28:43] Speaker 2: every one of their facilities, the outer bridges, the airports,
[28:46] Speaker 2: the communications facility, the Lincoln and halland tunnels, the path system,
[28:50] Speaker 2: the port authority, bus terminal, you name it, with outer
[28:53] Speaker 2: of bridges, we did at all. It was great. It
[28:55] Speaker 2: was a good experience.
[28:56] Speaker 3: Is there when you're doing that, especially with so many
[28:59] Speaker 3: targets and in free country, how do you mitigate like
[29:04] Speaker 3: all the risks?
[29:05] Speaker 2: You don't You're absolutely right. And one of the things
[29:08] Speaker 2: interesting thing as soon as you said free country, we
[29:12] Speaker 2: were looking at the some of the tunnels. I'm not
[29:14] Speaker 2: going to get into specifics, but some of the tunnels
[29:16] Speaker 2: they have. I went and bought the blueprints for the
[29:19] Speaker 2: tunnels for seven dollars because they're available to the public.
[29:24] Speaker 2: And that was one of the things we said, you know,
[29:26] Speaker 2: one of our recommendations, shut that off. Don't let anybody
[29:29] Speaker 2: come by that. There's no need for the public to
[29:31] Speaker 2: have it right. So, and that's the world we started
[29:35] Speaker 2: creeping into as of February nineteen ninety three from that
[29:38] Speaker 2: first car bombing.
[29:39] Speaker 1: I have to ask, of course, considering everything that happened
[29:42] Speaker 1: subsequently on nine to eleven, do you have any thoughts
[29:46] Speaker 1: on I mean, that's another threat that would have to
[29:49] Speaker 1: be mitigated elsewhere to prevent that attack from happening. But
[29:52] Speaker 1: I mean, what was going through your head when that happened,
[29:55] Speaker 1: When that attack happened.
[29:56] Speaker 2: Told you so? Yeah, told you so, because I actually
[30:00] Speaker 2: wrote it, and I got a lot of pushback saying, look,
[30:03] Speaker 2: if you you know follow up in all these recommendations
[30:06] Speaker 2: we make. One of the only things we can't help
[30:08] Speaker 2: you out is you know common cause the type attacks,
[30:11] Speaker 2: which is you know, the people doing the screening at
[30:14] Speaker 2: the airports and the screeners at the airport. Back then,
[30:17] Speaker 2: everybody that flew knew that most of them could barely
[30:20] Speaker 2: speak English, and they didn't want to do their job.
[30:23] Speaker 2: They didn't care. They're getting paid minimum wage and just yeah,
[30:25] Speaker 2: whatever go by. So you know, in a couple of
[30:28] Speaker 2: box cutters on an airplane wasn't a complicated task, right.
[30:32] Speaker 2: But I actually wrote about that and speaking about it
[30:35] Speaker 2: on a Bill O'Reilly show after nine to eleven happened
[30:38] Speaker 2: because he had found out about it and asked me.
[30:40] Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, around this somewhere around this time, back we're
[30:47] Speaker 1: talking on late eighties, early nineties, we also got involved
[30:49] Speaker 1: in doing undercover work for the government.
[30:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was just because it was an sf connection.
[30:54] Speaker 2: One of the agents was a former s FI soldier
[30:57] Speaker 2: and asked me. He says, hey, Arabic, and we know
[31:00] Speaker 2: you were over there for a long time during the war.
[31:03] Speaker 2: We're trying to penetrate this organization. Would you mind helping
[31:08] Speaker 2: us out? What do we know about this stuff? I said, okay, yeah, sure,
[31:12] Speaker 2: I'll help you. That was on a Wednesday. He said,
[31:15] Speaker 2: we spent you know, a lot of money trying to
[31:17] Speaker 2: get into this kingpin just of Arab descent. I said, okay,
[31:23] Speaker 2: And well that Sunday I was having bunch with the
[31:26] Speaker 2: guy that they spent years trying to get just because
[31:28] Speaker 2: of the contacts in Lebanon, So luck or whatever.
[31:33] Speaker 1: So were you posing as a buyer?
[31:35] Speaker 2: I wasn't posing as anybody. I went in as who
[31:37] Speaker 2: I was. I went as my real identity.
[31:39] Speaker 1: You know.
[31:40] Speaker 2: Again, I didn't know anything about, you know, doing law
[31:42] Speaker 2: enforcement type of work. But the guy asked me to help. Well, sure,
[31:46] Speaker 2: I'll help. The country ask you to help, You're gonna help.
[31:49] Speaker 2: Four years later, everybody was arrested, indicted, and a hundred
[31:53] Speaker 2: million dollars worth of drugs that came from the Middle East.
[31:55] Speaker 1: Wow, So it wasn't bad. And so you were over
[31:59] Speaker 1: there for four years in that trying to identify him.
[32:01] Speaker 2: No, no, no, it wasn't just over there. It was
[32:03] Speaker 2: both here and there, mainly in the US. Yeah, And
[32:06] Speaker 2: the rest happened here in the US. So they had
[32:09] Speaker 2: to get them over here to make their arrest. Some
[32:13] Speaker 2: of them actually lived here. The leaders of it actually
[32:16] Speaker 2: lived in on the East Coast in the US.
[32:19] Speaker 1: And that was like one of a string of like
[32:22] Speaker 1: sort of undercover federal investigations he helped with.
[32:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there was another one called the supernote.
[32:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'd love to hear about that.
[32:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting. It was a supernote and it
[32:31] Speaker 2: was a counterfeit hundred dollars bill that was so good
[32:36] Speaker 2: it passed through the Federal Reserve undetected shit, the federal
[32:40] Speaker 2: reserve banks. So of course, you know, we needed to
[32:43] Speaker 2: find out who's doing this, and the purpose behind it
[32:46] Speaker 2: was to undermine the confidence in the US currency. You
[32:50] Speaker 2: can't beat as militarily, so you're going to try to
[32:53] Speaker 2: undermine the world's confidence in our currency.
[32:55] Speaker 1: When you got brought into it, did they know where
[32:57] Speaker 1: those notes were coming from?
[32:58] Speaker 2: No? Oh shit, no, they had a ballpark idea. But
[33:01] Speaker 2: we ended up finding out and through the diplomatic channels
[33:04] Speaker 2: they shut it down. But it was the real deal.
[33:07] Speaker 2: And ultimately the people who were doing it were from
[33:11] Speaker 2: the Shaw Error. But there the Shaw Error people from
[33:15] Speaker 2: the Mint then were no longer in charge. They were
[33:18] Speaker 2: forced to do this, so they had no choice otherwise
[33:22] Speaker 2: they'd get their families would be killed and they'd be killed.
[33:24] Speaker 1: Could you tell us a little bit about how that
[33:26] Speaker 1: investigation went down from your point of.
[33:27] Speaker 2: View, You just spent a lot of time doing the
[33:30] Speaker 2: basic you know, investigative work and talking to people and
[33:34] Speaker 2: working sources. And just like if you're looking for somebody
[33:37] Speaker 2: who's been kidnapped, it's the same thing. You're not getting
[33:40] Speaker 2: calls from these guys though. That's the difference. You know,
[33:42] Speaker 2: when somebody gets kidnapped, you' usually gonna get a call saying, Hey,
[33:46] Speaker 2: I got so and so and what are you going
[33:48] Speaker 2: to give me for him? That wasn't the case here.
[33:50] Speaker 2: We had to go find it and through the sources.
[33:53] Speaker 2: So once we found our way through the sources, we
[33:55] Speaker 2: were able to determine where the supplies were coming from,
[34:01] Speaker 2: who was actually making it, and how it was being distributed.
[34:05] Speaker 2: So once we had that information, we brought it all
[34:08] Speaker 2: back and they were able to shut it down diplomatically.
[34:10] Speaker 1: So how were they doing that?
[34:13] Speaker 2: Wow, you need a secret Service agent to explain the details.
[34:16] Speaker 2: But what they did they had the paper and this
[34:21] Speaker 2: is when they first started putting those strips in the
[34:24] Speaker 2: one hundred dollars bills. They actually had those strips. We
[34:27] Speaker 2: were able to get some of those strips that they had.
[34:29] Speaker 2: How they actually manufactured that stuff, I got it. I
[34:32] Speaker 2: still couldn't tell you today. I don't know because our
[34:34] Speaker 2: sources can only go so far. But we were able
[34:37] Speaker 2: to get it. So only one sheet was had the
[34:41] Speaker 2: print and the other sheet didn't. And our source would say, okay,
[34:45] Speaker 2: here's a real one hundred dollars counterfeit bill, and here's
[34:49] Speaker 2: a fake. Give that to your people and tell me
[34:54] Speaker 2: which one is real. He's telling me which one is real.
[34:57] Speaker 2: He's testing us. So I remember going to a secret
[35:02] Speaker 2: service agent at a meeting and saying, okay, here, look
[35:05] Speaker 2: at this. He says, this one's real, this one's fake.
[35:10] Speaker 2: Secret service agent pulls out his briefcases, little lab and
[35:13] Speaker 2: starts looking at it, and he says, uh, sorry to
[35:16] Speaker 2: tell you this, but your source is playing here. You
[35:18] Speaker 2: got a bad source because they're both real. So no, okay.
[35:23] Speaker 2: Then they're saying, well, don't go back. You know this
[35:25] Speaker 2: is dangerous that the source is playing you, playing you.
[35:28] Speaker 2: About fifteen minutes later, he says, oh, time out, I
[35:31] Speaker 2: stand correct, and these are both supernotes, so so oh no, oh,
[35:37] Speaker 2: my source is no good now, but you been doing
[35:40] Speaker 2: this for seventeen years and you don't know it's that good.
[35:43] Speaker 2: You couldn't tell right away, right, So that's how good
[35:46] Speaker 2: they are. If you got a secret Service agent's been
[35:48] Speaker 2: doing this for seventeen years. He couldn't tell initially. See,
[35:51] Speaker 2: it took him about fifteen minutes before we could say, oh,
[35:53] Speaker 2: these are definitely supernotes. So that's how good they were.
[35:57] Speaker 3: So do you know, do you know if it was
[35:59] Speaker 3: ever to determine that if somebody from our own mint,
[36:03] Speaker 3: mint was sourcing this stuff?
[36:05] Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, that had nothing to do
[36:08] Speaker 2: with us, nothing to do with us. That was all foreigners.
[36:12] Speaker 2: And what happened was when the Shawl was in power,
[36:15] Speaker 2: his people came over and they saw how our mint worked,
[36:17] Speaker 2: they saw how we made our currency. So they went
[36:21] Speaker 2: back and then they were out of power and they
[36:23] Speaker 2: were grabbed by the Komeni type people said here's what
[36:27] Speaker 2: you guys are going to do for us, this is
[36:28] Speaker 2: what we want to do.
[36:30] Speaker 1: And so they could use the money to finance our
[36:32] Speaker 1: illicit activities, but also, as you said, undermine the dollar.
[36:35] Speaker 2: Absolutely, and they were distributing it by the by the
[36:38] Speaker 2: crateloads in Europe. Yeah. God, that's so incredible. Yeah, it
[36:43] Speaker 2: was unbelievable, But you know it was at the time,
[36:45] Speaker 2: and I'll never forget it's Vice Vice President Cheney who
[36:49] Speaker 2: shut it down diplomatically. So he's the one that had
[36:53] Speaker 2: the meetings with the whoever in the.
[36:55] Speaker 1: Middle East they put pressure on the Iranians.
[36:57] Speaker 2: He told them, you know, I think it was actually
[36:59] Speaker 2: through the Syrians that this is going to stop or
[37:03] Speaker 2: else we're gonna have some serious problems. And we remember
[37:05] Speaker 2: at the time the Syrians also controlled the Bacau Valley,
[37:09] Speaker 2: and the Bacall Valley had hash crops and opium for
[37:13] Speaker 2: from the furthest north to the further south down to
[37:16] Speaker 2: Zatli in the Bocau Valley all hash crops as far
[37:19] Speaker 2: as I could see, guarded by Syrian Russian tanks. So
[37:25] Speaker 2: they don't want to, let you know, they don't want
[37:28] Speaker 2: the Americans to come in and destroy their cash crops.
[37:30] Speaker 1: The Iranians were manufacturing the bills in Syria, or their
[37:33] Speaker 1: manufacturing Iran brought the Syrian and then onto Europe.
[37:36] Speaker 2: I think that they were doing it. They used Syria
[37:39] Speaker 2: as a transit gotch and they were actually make them
[37:41] Speaker 2: in the Lebanon Oh wow.
[37:44] Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, that is a complicated case.
[37:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but there was.
[37:50] Speaker 3: But again, like if it wasn't if somebody from the
[37:53] Speaker 3: Mint was like one of the companies, because aren't some
[37:56] Speaker 3: of those things, like the strips whatever they're they're kind
[37:58] Speaker 3: of proprietary, right.
[38:00] Speaker 2: Part even the paper's proprietary, so because you look at
[38:02] Speaker 2: the paper, Yeah, and it's got the like a little
[38:04] Speaker 2: blue color red like little hairs in it. Yeah, that's
[38:10] Speaker 2: all proprietary.
[38:10] Speaker 3: So somewhere along the way there was a supply chain weakness.
[38:13] Speaker 3: Whether it was an individual or it was.
[38:16] Speaker 2: I don't know if it's a supply chain weakness, or
[38:20] Speaker 2: they were bleaching one hundred dollar bills and using the paper.
[38:23] Speaker 2: Oh oh oh oh that makes so you know, now
[38:27] Speaker 2: you're getting into stuff that I don't know about. It's
[38:29] Speaker 2: very technical. Yeah, you got to talk to a secret
[38:31] Speaker 2: service agent with that, but those are other options.
[38:34] Speaker 3: Fascinating.
[38:35] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[38:37] Speaker 1: One of the other things you got involved in around
[38:39] Speaker 1: this timeframe too, was recovering children who had been kidnapped,
[38:42] Speaker 1: and I remember a few of the parents actually reached
[38:45] Speaker 1: out to me. At one point I was wonder if
[38:47] Speaker 1: you could tell me, like how you got brought into
[38:49] Speaker 1: that world.
[38:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, I I don't remember. I think it was somebody
[38:56] Speaker 2: was in deep shit and I got a phone call saying, hey,
[38:59] Speaker 2: this kid's been a did blah blah blah blah, we
[39:01] Speaker 2: need your help. It wasn't a matter of could you help,
[39:03] Speaker 2: We need your help, and it's a kid. Who's not
[39:06] Speaker 2: going to help a kid. But I've also had calls
[39:10] Speaker 2: actually going back to nineteen ninety three, I was on
[39:14] Speaker 2: top of the George Washington Bridge doing the vulnerability assessment
[39:18] Speaker 2: on the intermediate supports, you know, the towers. I was
[39:21] Speaker 2: up on the tower when I got a call from
[39:23] Speaker 2: an FBI agent I won't say his name. He's retired
[39:26] Speaker 2: now though, and said, we need your help because there's
[39:30] Speaker 2: been a child abducted and taking to bay Root, Lebanon,
[39:37] Speaker 2: and the mother is presently in Cyprus and she's getting
[39:41] Speaker 2: ready to go into Bay Route to try to get
[39:43] Speaker 2: her child back, and we're scared because the husband will
[39:45] Speaker 2: probably kill her. And the wind's blowing, and thinking did
[39:51] Speaker 2: I hear this right? And said yeah, So he says,
[39:55] Speaker 2: we need your help. Can this lady call you? Sure?
[40:00] Speaker 2: Have her call me? All right, she's in Cyprus. She's
[40:02] Speaker 2: gonna call you in five minutes. Okay, lady calls me,
[40:05] Speaker 2: you know, and it's a mom. I said, well, is
[40:07] Speaker 2: it possible you can wait until I get there? She
[40:10] Speaker 2: absolutely not it's a mama bear. She's going for a child.
[40:14] Speaker 2: Don't get in the way of mama bear going for
[40:16] Speaker 2: a child. She's absolutely not. I'm going to get my son.
[40:19] Speaker 2: Said okay, well, do you have a phone number there?
[40:22] Speaker 2: She gave me a phone number, so I was able
[40:24] Speaker 2: through her phone number. She got in there and she
[40:27] Speaker 2: played it cool. We talked about how she'd play it.
[40:29] Speaker 2: Play it cool with your your husband and you know,
[40:31] Speaker 2: try to be nice and no hard feelings and don't
[40:35] Speaker 2: you know, beat him up or anything, and don't stab
[40:37] Speaker 2: him when he's sleeping, and just be calm and give
[40:40] Speaker 2: me a few days and we'll catch up to you. Okay.
[40:42] Speaker 2: So I was able to catch up to her and
[40:44] Speaker 2: up meeting her at the local produce market right on
[40:47] Speaker 2: the street. Was able to talk to her and she
[40:50] Speaker 2: did the FBI confirmed there's an arrest warrant for the father.
[40:53] Speaker 2: The mom has custody through the courts, UH and the
[40:56] Speaker 2: State Department. One of them back also, so it was
[40:59] Speaker 2: had the blessing and it was legit, you know, through
[41:02] Speaker 2: the courts. So I said, okay, so you did the
[41:06] Speaker 2: standard what put a surveillance on. We had to inside
[41:10] Speaker 2: scoop with the mom because she was living there, so
[41:13] Speaker 2: we saw when the father would drop the child off
[41:15] Speaker 2: at school. We dropped the child off at school, We
[41:17] Speaker 2: pulled up with the mom right behind. See the father
[41:19] Speaker 2: take off. The child's mom calls the child, Hey, Johnny,
[41:24] Speaker 2: come here. Johnny comes running over, Mom gives him a hug.
[41:27] Speaker 2: Let's go, we're going off. We went cross over to Damascus,
[41:30] Speaker 2: get on airplane, goodbye so and home safe and sound.
[41:36] Speaker 2: And you ended up doing a handful of those, right, Yeah,
[41:38] Speaker 2: we did several of them, but not just there. We
[41:39] Speaker 2: did them in Peru. We did one in Northern Ireland
[41:43] Speaker 2: and it was back in the days when the RA
[41:45] Speaker 2: was still you know, bombing stuff and big, big war
[41:48] Speaker 2: going on there, so that one, that one was an
[41:51] Speaker 2: icy one as well. But yeah, we've done them in
[41:54] Speaker 2: many different parts of the world, but it's always been
[41:56] Speaker 2: with the blessing of the state department and law enforcement
[41:59] Speaker 2: and the court's given the parent custody.
[42:03] Speaker 1: Here.
[42:04] Speaker 3: How often do the local governments help you and how
[42:08] Speaker 3: often do you avoid them?
[42:10] Speaker 2: We'd never talk to him, Okay, never talk I take
[42:13] Speaker 2: that back. We talked to in England. We had to
[42:16] Speaker 2: get the Lord Chancellor's office to stamp some papers for us,
[42:20] Speaker 2: the court orders from the judge here, and then from
[42:24] Speaker 2: there we went to Belfast and because we had the
[42:30] Speaker 2: Lord Chancellor's office stamp in, we were able to get
[42:33] Speaker 2: police support as well. So the police came in with
[42:36] Speaker 2: their armored personnel carriers, surrounded the house and we were
[42:39] Speaker 2: able to go in. So that's one time we were
[42:41] Speaker 2: able to use local. Otherwise we don't say a word.
[42:44] Speaker 2: We just in and out.
[42:46] Speaker 1: Because if you were to be caught doing this in
[42:48] Speaker 1: a place like be Root, I mean ostensibly you could
[42:50] Speaker 1: be charged with kidnapping, right, you got a problem.
[42:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, we got a problem.
[42:54] Speaker 3: And a lot of places where particularly fathers run with
[42:56] Speaker 3: the child, like if he's a Middle Eastern descent, like
[42:59] Speaker 3: the the state recognizes the father's right to the child.
[43:03] Speaker 2: That's right. But under shaddy a law, the mother has
[43:08] Speaker 2: custody until the daughter's like eleven or thirteen with their son,
[43:12] Speaker 2: and after that the father gets custody.
[43:14] Speaker 1: Okay, so.
[43:17] Speaker 2: But still at the end of the day, you got
[43:19] Speaker 2: to have father's permission to travel a lot of those countries.
[43:24] Speaker 1: And another interesting one that you had mentioned was that
[43:28] Speaker 1: there were several different times it sounded like where you're
[43:31] Speaker 1: tracking some of the former TWA hijackers for potentially for
[43:35] Speaker 1: them to be arrested or swooped in on. I just
[43:38] Speaker 1: wonder if you could detail some of that.
[43:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting. You know, we've been approached about
[43:42] Speaker 2: that a few times, but you know, I was going
[43:46] Speaker 2: over there a lot and really didn't want much to
[43:48] Speaker 2: do with that, you know, because that could be dangerous
[43:50] Speaker 2: for people I know, and so on and so forth.
[43:53] Speaker 2: So I kind of brush that off and didn't pay
[43:56] Speaker 2: much attention to it. And I don't believe in those
[43:57] Speaker 2: bounties anyway. I think they're all I think they're all bullshit.
[44:02] Speaker 3: Bounties from like Bounties for Justice type thing.
[44:04] Speaker 2: Yea, yeah, yeah. I've actually spoken to the State Department
[44:08] Speaker 2: and I don't remember the guy's name, but he was
[44:09] Speaker 2: a former SF guy. So he gave me the straight scoop.
[44:12] Speaker 2: He said, look, that's only there because we've got to
[44:15] Speaker 2: put it there. I said, no, what if somebody just
[44:17] Speaker 2: says I'm going to get somebody and I'm going to
[44:19] Speaker 2: bring him back. He says, we've never had that happen
[44:22] Speaker 2: and we don't recommend it. And I've actually had other
[44:26] Speaker 2: law enforcement guys federal law enforce say, don't do it
[44:29] Speaker 2: because you'll get prosecuted for like kidnapping or whatever. No,
[44:33] Speaker 2: just for for getting the wanted guy, right. And I've
[44:36] Speaker 2: been told, well that's in case. You know, he is
[44:38] Speaker 2: an American law enforcement officers on vacation or something and
[44:42] Speaker 2: he sees one of these guys. I said, come on,
[44:44] Speaker 2: you got to think of something better than that. That's
[44:46] Speaker 2: their bullshit. Yeh, who's tell me. You know, a guy
[44:50] Speaker 2: from NYPD's going to be in Beayrout on vacation, He's
[44:54] Speaker 2: going to bump into some terrorists, right, he's going to
[44:56] Speaker 2: handcuff him and bring him home. Yeah, okay.
[44:58] Speaker 3: Or those rewards more were like people who might be
[45:01] Speaker 3: in that organization or be around and like I'm going
[45:04] Speaker 3: to turn this guy.
[45:05] Speaker 1: Like putting a bounty on bin Laden.
[45:07] Speaker 2: Originally, no, I don't think originally they were set up
[45:09] Speaker 2: for that. I think originally they were set up for
[45:12] Speaker 2: the old American bounty hunter right to go get them, right.
[45:15] Speaker 2: But I think later it developed into that because you know,
[45:18] Speaker 2: agencies started using sources to get information and sources to
[45:22] Speaker 2: lure people out and bring those kinds of things. Yeah.
[45:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting let's get.
[45:28] Speaker 1: Into Iraq then, I mean nine to eleven happens the
[45:31] Speaker 1: wars on and having this all the experience that you
[45:35] Speaker 1: have and already having experience as a security contractor, I
[45:37] Speaker 1: mean you were involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
[45:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was interesting because the undercover case was still
[45:45] Speaker 2: going when the first when Desert Storm started, and that
[45:50] Speaker 2: undercover case went from nineteen eighty eight to September nineteen
[45:56] Speaker 2: ninety one. I forgot when Desert Storm for happened. I
[46:00] Speaker 2: think it was January February of nineteen ninety ninety one,
[46:05] Speaker 2: right or ninety one?
[46:07] Speaker 3: Wait was it ninety or.
[46:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was ninety one ninety one? Yeah, positive. Anyway,
[46:13] Speaker 2: I got activated. So I remember calling the case agent,
[46:18] Speaker 2: one of the case agents and the case and said, hey, guys,
[46:22] Speaker 2: I just want to let you know I'm leaving. I
[46:23] Speaker 2: got activated. So no, no, no, no, no, no stay
[46:26] Speaker 2: right there. Now, that case you had FBI, IRS, Customs, FBI.
[46:36] Speaker 2: So there's four different case agents. After every undercover meet,
[46:39] Speaker 2: I had to come back and debrief with four different agents.
[46:43] Speaker 2: They all wanted me alone. And there was four hours
[46:46] Speaker 2: right there. So if I have a two hour undercover,
[46:51] Speaker 2: I got to give him a reader's digest version because
[46:53] Speaker 2: I know I got four more hours to go, so
[46:55] Speaker 2: we're going to cut that short. So what happened was
[46:57] Speaker 2: I called one of the case agents, said, hey, I
[46:59] Speaker 2: got act debated. I'm out of here. Oh no, no,
[47:02] Speaker 2: don't go anywhere, And probably within thirty or forty minutes,
[47:06] Speaker 2: I must have had fifteen or twenty you know, g
[47:09] Speaker 2: cars in my driveway. All the different agencies were coming over. No, no, no.
[47:15] Speaker 2: They brought their little mobile van with the high tech
[47:20] Speaker 2: telephones and Commo gear in it and stuff, and they
[47:23] Speaker 2: were calling the Attorney General saying, hey, we need you
[47:25] Speaker 2: to call the Pentagon because he can't go now because
[47:28] Speaker 2: we're close to the end of this. We're only, we
[47:31] Speaker 2: later realized, only about four months away. I think are
[47:33] Speaker 2: five months away from the undercover case being wrapped up.
[47:37] Speaker 2: So they said, you can't go. You just can't do
[47:40] Speaker 2: this right now. We'll lose four years of work. And
[47:43] Speaker 2: my shit's already packed. I went packed my duffel bag
[47:47] Speaker 2: and my kit bag. I'm ready to go, and they said, no,
[47:50] Speaker 2: you can't go. So I was disappointed. So anyways, they said,
[47:53] Speaker 2: well you can go right after we finished the operation Undercover.
[47:57] Speaker 2: I didn't get to go, but anyways, and going as
[48:00] Speaker 2: a as a contractor back in two thousand and three
[48:05] Speaker 2: when we in December January two thousand and three when
[48:09] Speaker 2: we first started and we're doing you know, a ton
[48:11] Speaker 2: of PSD work. We did a lot of work with
[48:14] Speaker 2: the Department of Justice and mass Graves got to work
[48:18] Speaker 2: with some great guys there, some of the US Attorneys U,
[48:21] Speaker 2: some of the agents, and it was it was helpful
[48:25] Speaker 2: too because I speak Arabic, and you know how it is,
[48:29] Speaker 2: there's not a lot of people that speak Arabic. The
[48:31] Speaker 2: State Department was you know, scarfing up everybody they could
[48:35] Speaker 2: that could speak Arabic. So we'd go out in the
[48:37] Speaker 2: middle of a desert to a mass grave that was identified,
[48:40] Speaker 2: and they'd bring all the scientists out. We'd set camps up,
[48:43] Speaker 2: you know, and they'd bring the chow in and you know,
[48:46] Speaker 2: you'd have showers and some mini camp there, and they'd
[48:50] Speaker 2: have the DNA specialists and the the the what do
[48:55] Speaker 2: you call it, the FBI, like the Evidence Response Team folks,
[48:59] Speaker 2: just people that are absolutely brilliant in this stuff and
[49:01] Speaker 2: they dig up all these bodies, yeah, and start going
[49:04] Speaker 2: through to get the DNA and start working on it.
[49:06] Speaker 2: So we secured that, and we secured the transportation to
[49:10] Speaker 2: and from people, so on and so forth. So that
[49:13] Speaker 2: was that was interesting. And we also did, you know,
[49:16] Speaker 2: because of the Department adjusted a lot we had to
[49:19] Speaker 2: do with the protection of some of the witnesses against
[49:22] Speaker 2: Saddam and an administration and when you're building a new
[49:25] Speaker 2: courthouse over there, so it was really impressive to watch.
[49:29] Speaker 1: There was a lot of security and protection work mostly
[49:32] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. How long did that keep you busy?
[49:35] Speaker 1: Going back and forth from.
[49:36] Speaker 2: Well that was to like two thousand and eight, yeah,
[49:40] Speaker 2: two thousand and seven. Yeah, it was busy because it
[49:43] Speaker 2: was constantly and you know, they're just throwing contracts at
[49:46] Speaker 2: your throwing just throwing money at you. We need you
[49:48] Speaker 2: to do this, we need you to do that. So
[49:51] Speaker 2: it was a busy time.
[49:52] Speaker 3: Now, what were some of the other thing because in
[49:54] Speaker 3: your bio, like you mentioned some of the other things
[49:56] Speaker 3: that you were asked to do during that time or
[49:58] Speaker 3: hired to do, like.
[49:59] Speaker 2: What we're Yeah, like Codell, we had the Codell contract,
[50:02] Speaker 2: the congressional delegraation, delegation, so anytime those people would come
[50:06] Speaker 2: in the politicians we'd have to pick them up at
[50:08] Speaker 2: the airport and bring him into the green zone and
[50:11] Speaker 2: take them where they want him, do their protection for him,
[50:14] Speaker 2: and you know, until they got really bad and then
[50:16] Speaker 2: we'd start flying them in or they take that iron
[50:19] Speaker 2: dragon doing from you know, the big big piece of
[50:23] Speaker 2: target club. Yeah, that's one of the things we did.
[50:27] Speaker 2: We did a lot of static protection at Taji, which
[50:32] Speaker 2: is north of Baghdad. We did some of the UN facilities.
[50:37] Speaker 2: We did protection for some of the logistics sites as well.
[50:42] Speaker 1: Did you have a cross paths with Bob Adolf by chance?
[50:46] Speaker 1: He was a SF officer actually, I believe he was
[50:49] Speaker 1: a tenth Group guy and he was running security for
[50:52] Speaker 1: the UN building when it got blown up.
[50:54] Speaker 2: Oh no, No, we didn't have it. Then we had it.
[50:57] Speaker 2: We had a UN site got where it was not
[51:02] Speaker 2: Taji the officer direction. I forgot the name of the site. Anyways,
[51:06] Speaker 2: it was a UN camp, a small camp. It was
[51:08] Speaker 2: mainly military there. It wasn't civilians. But I know what
[51:11] Speaker 2: you're talking about. You're talking about the UN corporate building.
[51:15] Speaker 2: It was early on in the war, the headquarters building. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
[51:19] Speaker 2: had we had a military a UN military place that
[51:22] Speaker 2: we were secured and they had you know, foreigners that
[51:26] Speaker 2: are assigned to the UN Force that were staying there.
[51:29] Speaker 2: So that's the base we protected.
[51:31] Speaker 3: And then you mentioned that like during this time, you're
[51:33] Speaker 3: alsastic sort of set up an intil network, like a
[51:36] Speaker 3: local intail network, right or.
[51:38] Speaker 2: That was in Afghanistan. That was it was Afghanistan.
[51:41] Speaker 1: Okay, how did Afghanistan figure into this because you said
[51:44] Speaker 1: you were bouncing around to Iraq like to like seven
[51:47] Speaker 1: o eight. When did Afghanistan kind of come up on
[51:49] Speaker 1: the radar for you?
[51:50] Speaker 2: That was in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
[51:55] Speaker 2: right around the same time. As soon as we don't
[51:57] Speaker 2: finish with one, we've started on the other.
[52:00] Speaker 1: It was it was that when you say we, I
[52:01] Speaker 1: mean it was like your entire security company kind of yeah,
[52:04] Speaker 1: moving from one to the other.
[52:05] Speaker 2: Yeah. And we worked a lot with the company that
[52:08] Speaker 2: was a prime contractor and a lot of these called MBM. Yeah.
[52:12] Speaker 2: Guy Dariel Marquez, great guy. And Rob Rubin another great guy.
[52:16] Speaker 2: Rob was the brains to make everything happen. You know,
[52:19] Speaker 2: it's just just Jew's off the charts smart. I'd call
[52:22] Speaker 2: him on a Jewish holiday at you know, three in
[52:24] Speaker 2: the morning his time, and he'd say, well, look, you know,
[52:28] Speaker 2: you know my daughter, my wife, Rachel's the daughter of
[52:31] Speaker 2: a rabbi. I really can't be using anything electronic, anything
[52:35] Speaker 2: electronic today, But let me sneak into the closet and
[52:39] Speaker 2: I'll bring my laptop with me and he'd bang out
[52:42] Speaker 2: of he'd bang out all the numbers of the proposer
[52:44] Speaker 2: in the closet, but he wasn't supposed to. So I
[52:46] Speaker 2: hope Rachel's not watching. But he was a great guy.
[52:49] Speaker 2: But he's the guy that made made it all happen.
[52:54] Speaker 1: And so what was the what kind of contracts did
[52:56] Speaker 1: you start picking up in Afghanistan?
[52:58] Speaker 2: Afghanistan? It was it was actually a maintenance contract. We
[53:03] Speaker 2: would in bed with the SF teams who were training
[53:06] Speaker 2: the commandos, the Afghan commandos. And it was first started
[53:13] Speaker 2: out a very small pilot program. At first it was
[53:16] Speaker 2: only like three or four people, and none of the
[53:18] Speaker 2: big companies wanted it. So yeah, we'll take it, So
[53:21] Speaker 2: we did it. Put the proposals in only two people.
[53:25] Speaker 2: Only two companies put proposals in one other one and
[53:28] Speaker 2: the other one. They weren't even technically acceptable. Their proposal
[53:31] Speaker 2: was like two pages long. We actually saw a copy
[53:34] Speaker 2: of it later, but so we got the contract and
[53:37] Speaker 2: then from there it built, you know, it grew, and
[53:39] Speaker 2: they kept adding more and adding more, you know, fobs
[53:42] Speaker 2: and more teams that wanted us to be embedded and
[53:46] Speaker 2: train them on the maintenance. Mainly the Afghans trained them
[53:50] Speaker 2: on how to repair your weapon, how to clean your weapon,
[53:55] Speaker 2: how to do the night vision you know, and your
[53:58] Speaker 2: generators and so on and so forth, because they were
[54:00] Speaker 2: terrible about it, which a lot of armies are, you know,
[54:04] Speaker 2: it's just basic maintenance that they'd say, well, the gun
[54:07] Speaker 2: don't work, throw it out. We might help if you
[54:09] Speaker 2: clean it once in a while. Yeah. Yeah.
[54:11] Speaker 1: So then how did you get involved then with you know,
[54:15] Speaker 1: the Dewey clerage over there.
[54:18] Speaker 2: Well, actually I knew Dewey from way back in the
[54:20] Speaker 2: days of Beirut. But then we ended up working together
[54:25] Speaker 2: on a couple of different projects, and one of them
[54:27] Speaker 2: was there was a New York Times reporter that got
[54:31] Speaker 2: kidnapped and taken across the border and ended up being
[54:36] Speaker 2: in the custody of the Hacanies. The Conies took them over.
[54:40] Speaker 2: So somehow a connection of New York Times contacted me
[54:44] Speaker 2: and asked for help and we were able to help
[54:47] Speaker 2: do some work on that, and of course Dewey was
[54:50] Speaker 2: instrumental in it. You know, the guy's got contacts all
[54:55] Speaker 2: over the place. It's just stunning. You know, he was
[54:57] Speaker 2: the first head of the terrorism center with the CIA,
[55:02] Speaker 2: so there's not many people do we didn't know anywhere
[55:05] Speaker 2: in the world.
[55:06] Speaker 1: Can you able or willing to talk about that at all?
[55:08] Speaker 1: About about how you can get in that reporter out
[55:11] Speaker 1: of there? How that came about?
[55:13] Speaker 2: Well, you know, again it's issues in sources and in
[55:19] Speaker 2: different sources and confirming. So you get three or four
[55:22] Speaker 2: sources and eventually, you know, you find out that two
[55:25] Speaker 2: of them are telling you the straight scoop and one's not,
[55:28] Speaker 2: so you push them aside, and you're constantly trying to
[55:30] Speaker 2: develop more sources. So it's like any kind of investigative tool.
[55:34] Speaker 2: We pull that up, that information, all the sources, and
[55:38] Speaker 2: I'll use sources, do We will use sources. Other of
[55:40] Speaker 2: our guys will use sources, and we pull our information,
[55:43] Speaker 2: we analyze it and see what's right and what's not,
[55:45] Speaker 2: and look and find out where he's at. And you know,
[55:48] Speaker 2: we have people on the ground there if we need
[55:50] Speaker 2: it if we need to take some kind of action,
[55:53] Speaker 2: and it's only a plane right away, and you know,
[55:57] Speaker 2: ultimately we find out where he's at, and that's when
[55:59] Speaker 2: you start zoo in and you know, the bad guys
[56:02] Speaker 2: that you know, how Connie's are asking for millions and
[56:05] Speaker 2: millions of dollars and you know, and then you got
[56:08] Speaker 2: the FBI involved also on another angle because it's a
[56:12] Speaker 2: US citizen that's been abducted, so they're involved, and you know,
[56:16] Speaker 2: and I got to say, the reporter's wife was just,
[56:20] Speaker 2: you know what a lady, constantly working for him, constantly
[56:26] Speaker 2: pushing people and different agencies and the emotion of it,
[56:30] Speaker 2: and she was just an amazing human being, just you know, pushing.
[56:34] Speaker 2: If I was ever kidnapped, I want somebody like her
[56:37] Speaker 2: pushing to help me because she took no prisoners and
[56:40] Speaker 2: smart lady and she worked hard at it. But yeah,
[56:43] Speaker 2: so ultimately it's you know, developing sources and working those
[56:47] Speaker 2: sources and getting the intel, processing it, analyzing it, and
[56:50] Speaker 2: then seeing what's the best options to get them out
[56:52] Speaker 2: At the end of the day. I think there was
[56:55] Speaker 2: a book written by the reporter that said he escaped,
[57:01] Speaker 2: what what is it?
[57:03] Speaker 3: You know, we obviously we know about the CIA, we
[57:05] Speaker 3: know about the DA, and then we know a lot
[57:08] Speaker 3: of us know about Dewey clergy. Like there are these
[57:11] Speaker 3: sort of private intelligence efforts out there across the world,
[57:17] Speaker 3: you know, very involved sometimes and very competent.
[57:21] Speaker 1: What what is that?
[57:23] Speaker 3: What does that look like from the inside. I'm sure
[57:25] Speaker 3: that it's very compartmentalized. You're just doing your thing. But
[57:30] Speaker 3: like you worry about funding, do you worry about covered?
[57:32] Speaker 2: You know?
[57:32] Speaker 3: Or or and I don't mean cover as in like
[57:35] Speaker 3: like a cover and alias, but top cover, like the
[57:38] Speaker 3: State Department like taking care of you.
[57:41] Speaker 2: Great question. Great question. We've been one of those, you know,
[57:45] Speaker 2: outfits that provided intelligence. We had a contract and it
[57:49] Speaker 2: comes from some of the big contractors. Then it goes
[57:53] Speaker 2: to a second and then we're the third subcontractor. And
[57:56] Speaker 2: I heard they do that, you know, So it just
[57:59] Speaker 2: gives you or top cover per se and less people
[58:03] Speaker 2: know about you. Bullshit, They all know about you because
[58:06] Speaker 2: we're the guys on the ground over there, so they
[58:08] Speaker 2: find out about us. They don't know who the other
[58:10] Speaker 2: two contractors above us are, and they don't care because
[58:13] Speaker 2: they never have any dealings with them. We're the ones
[58:15] Speaker 2: passing the intel up, and it's a one way street.
[58:19] Speaker 2: We're not tasked to do things. We're contracted to go
[58:22] Speaker 2: collect information. And that's what we did. We collect a
[58:26] Speaker 2: bunch of intel and we send it up the pipeline.
[58:29] Speaker 2: And you know, there's the difference between collecting it for
[58:33] Speaker 2: force protection and collecting it for intelligence person purposes. We're
[58:38] Speaker 2: collecting it for force protection.
[58:40] Speaker 1: Atmospherics, I think is the term.
[58:42] Speaker 2: Indeed it is, it is. Yeah, so we're collecting atmospherics.
[58:47] Speaker 2: So we pass our atmospherics up and then you know,
[58:49] Speaker 2: we can sometimes see the results in the newspapers which
[58:53] Speaker 2: we have seen. We've seen you know, Jones strikes based
[58:56] Speaker 2: on some of our intelligence we provided. But again we're
[59:00] Speaker 2: not tasked with anything, and we don't know where it's going.
[59:03] Speaker 2: We get the information, we think it's good, we pass
[59:05] Speaker 2: it up. What what the government does with it, it's
[59:08] Speaker 2: their business, right.
[59:09] Speaker 1: You mentioned, you know, you were pretty close with Dewey,
[59:13] Speaker 1: and I mean he's not with us anymore, but I
[59:15] Speaker 1: mean I was wondering if you had any interest in
[59:18] Speaker 1: talking a little bit about like what he was like
[59:20] Speaker 1: as a person as an intelligence professional.
[59:22] Speaker 2: Oh boy, oh boy, he was like you know, we
[59:27] Speaker 2: were kids. We had these Britannica encyclopedias. He was like
[59:33] Speaker 2: Library of Congress of those put together. The guy was,
[59:37] Speaker 2: first of all, he's a Brown graduate, so he's no dummy.
[59:40] Speaker 2: And he ended up running, you know, the first counter
[59:43] Speaker 2: terrorism center for the for the agency. But we had
[59:47] Speaker 2: issues going on in some place in the Middle East,
[59:49] Speaker 2: and you know, we needed to contact Israelis to let
[59:54] Speaker 2: them know that stay out of this for deconfliction purposes.
[59:57] Speaker 2: And Dewey says, yeah, no problem, I got that. What
[1:00:00] Speaker 2: do you mean you got That's it looks basically, what
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: did I just say? You said you got that? But
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: I don't know what that means. What does that mean
[1:00:08] Speaker 2: to it? He says, I'll call so and so and
[1:00:10] Speaker 2: I'll make sure that there's not a problem. So and
[1:00:13] Speaker 2: so was the last head of the Masad, So that's
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: the kind of guy. And I say, I got that.
[1:00:21] Speaker 2: I got that, Okay, all right, cool, So of course
[1:00:24] Speaker 2: I'm going over searching the name of the guys. He'll
[1:00:27] Speaker 2: be damn, he's right, that's the former head of the Massade. Yeah. So,
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: but guy was absolutely brilliant, brilliant, practical, you know, and
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: one hundred percent pro American. Oh to the bone, to
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: the bone, you know, we're all pro Americans. And and
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: do we were actually in the military for a little while.
[1:00:49] Speaker 2: They made them when they first sign up this CIA
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: said go join the army. Go join the army, and
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: then come back and we'll touch base with you and
[1:00:56] Speaker 2: come back and check in with us in six months.
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: So they go in as officers and lieutenants and they
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: do some of their basic stuff that officers do, and
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: then six months later, a year later, they come back
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: and start their training in the CIA. So but you
[1:01:12] Speaker 2: know he did the Fozzi unis also that capture Fazzi
[1:01:17] Speaker 2: unie was. I forgot what the crime was, but it's
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: the one they did in the Mediterranean where they lured
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: the guy out. They terro us out and on a
[1:01:29] Speaker 2: boat with bikini clad women and partying and drugs and
[1:01:33] Speaker 2: all that. And that was Dewey's mastermind. He was the
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: mastermind behind that. And then the FBI agents, the girls
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: in bikinis were FBI agents, and they had some of
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: the HRT guys there and they rest them right there
[1:01:46] Speaker 2: on the boat and then they take him over to
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: one of the Navy ships. Our navy ships, get him
[1:01:53] Speaker 2: to an aircraft carrier, put him in a straight jacket,
[1:01:55] Speaker 2: fly him straight back to Andrews, and then they prosecuted
[1:01:58] Speaker 2: him there. So that was Dewey's that was Dewey's brainchild.
[1:02:04] Speaker 1: It's pretty wild stuff. And then you know, as uh
[1:02:09] Speaker 1: you mentioned, you know, the security contact contract relationship you
[1:02:14] Speaker 1: had uh to provide maintenance to the Afghan military and
[1:02:18] Speaker 1: that kind of like blew up at a certain point
[1:02:20] Speaker 1: on you.
[1:02:21] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, we had big problems from it, and
[1:02:24] Speaker 2: which shocked me because you know, this is again Harvey
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: Silverglad wrote wrote a book, A Felony a Day, great book,
[1:02:33] Speaker 2: and uh, you know, and you think that the justice
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: is going to be fair and legit and all that.
[1:02:38] Speaker 2: Now I've been on that side. I've seen how prosecutors
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: work and agents work because I spent four years undercover
[1:02:45] Speaker 2: with them. So you know, there there was you know,
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: Department of Defense had the Inspector General's Office out looking
[1:02:52] Speaker 2: for people to prosecute, and they ended up prosecuting us
[1:02:56] Speaker 2: because they thought we had done something wrong. They thought
[1:03:00] Speaker 2: we knew what the other company was gonna bid for
[1:03:04] Speaker 2: a project, although they had the evidence because they subpoena everything.
[1:03:08] Speaker 2: They have the evidence showing in an email traffic that
[1:03:11] Speaker 2: that wasn't true. Their whole case is based on when
[1:03:13] Speaker 2: they prosecuted somebody to charge somebody, Well, you had inside information,
[1:03:18] Speaker 2: Well check with everybody on the selection committee. Nobody knew us,
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: nobody knew anybody else. And this is all in transcripts,
[1:03:25] Speaker 2: and it's all in emotions, and it's all in the judgment.
[1:03:28] Speaker 2: But it's some weird shit that went on because we
[1:03:31] Speaker 2: had a judge originally that our local council in Utah
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: was friends with the judge. The judge recused herself in
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: writing a written order because there's a conflict because her
[1:03:42] Speaker 2: good friend is one of our lawyers. Well that lawyer
[1:03:46] Speaker 2: unbeknownst to us, We didn't know that why she recused
[1:03:48] Speaker 2: herself Because she didn't say why, just recused herself in
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: an order. Okay. The local council tells us, well, we've
[1:03:57] Speaker 2: got we're busy and this case looks like it was
[1:04:00] Speaker 2: going to take a lot of time. Can you get
[1:04:02] Speaker 2: other local council? Didn't know any better, said yeah, sure,
[1:04:05] Speaker 2: we got an other local council. The judge takes the
[1:04:07] Speaker 2: case back from another judge.
[1:04:13] Speaker 1: Really.
[1:04:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't there something in the law says that the
[1:04:18] Speaker 2: judge can't have a sense of a biased Yeah, it's
[1:04:23] Speaker 2: kind of weird. Yeah. I've talked to guys that were
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: involved with the prosecution of Saddam Hussein. US attorneys and
[1:04:31] Speaker 2: some of them have been, you know, career prosecutors for
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: twenty five thirty years, said they've never seen that unheard of.
[1:04:37] Speaker 2: So no, it's not unheard of. It happened.
[1:04:40] Speaker 1: And so they were accusing you of essentially bid rigging.
[1:04:42] Speaker 2: I mean, it's kind of what having the The accusation
[1:04:45] Speaker 2: was violation of Procurement Integrity Act, which I never heard
[1:04:49] Speaker 2: of before in my life. But anyway, that charge was dismissed.
[1:04:53] Speaker 2: So and then they charged you with money laundering and
[1:04:56] Speaker 2: a host of other Money laundering is because you submitted
[1:04:59] Speaker 2: an envoy to Department of Defense and you got paid
[1:05:03] Speaker 2: pursuant to the contract. But they're saying, since you had
[1:05:07] Speaker 2: inside information, the contract's no good, so we consider that
[1:05:10] Speaker 2: money laundering. It's all a crock of shit. Anyway, The
[1:05:13] Speaker 2: bottom line is the violation of Procurement Integrity Act gets
[1:05:17] Speaker 2: thrown out. Prosecutor's got a real problem now because we
[1:05:21] Speaker 2: had a suppression hearing catch the agents under oath lying
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: and confirming they violated the search warrant. You got a
[1:05:29] Speaker 2: search warrant for the year two thousand and seven. Did
[1:05:31] Speaker 2: you look at anything else? Absolutely not, you're under Oh
[1:05:36] Speaker 2: you're under oah, mister special agent from the IG's office.
[1:05:39] Speaker 2: The IG's office, you're under ove. Nope, we don't look
[1:05:42] Speaker 2: at anything. Oh, here you go. You know, it's like
[1:05:47] Speaker 2: when they got the flee Bailly got Furman. You sure
[1:05:50] Speaker 2: you never used the N word? You sure, Yeah, I'm sure.
[1:05:54] Speaker 1: Oops, here's the tape.
[1:05:55] Speaker 2: Well, here's the document. This is you, mister special agent
[1:05:59] Speaker 2: from Inspector Office. You lied, You said that you didn't
[1:06:02] Speaker 2: go outside the warrant. Here it is outside the warrant. Anyways,
[1:06:05] Speaker 2: the Reader's Digest version of this, they said, Okay, look,
[1:06:08] Speaker 2: we're going to give you two million dollars back, plead
[1:06:11] Speaker 2: guilty to any charge you want, and we'll call it
[1:06:15] Speaker 2: a day. It's so weird that like this is after
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: they freeze your money. Also, right, so you can't find.
[1:06:20] Speaker 3: That how long has how long have has your has
[1:06:24] Speaker 3: your personal and this isn't we're not talking about your
[1:06:27] Speaker 3: business money, right or oh?
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: This is business money.
[1:06:29] Speaker 3: Okay, how long has that money been frozen? Well, you know, oh,
[1:06:32] Speaker 3: they freeze it before they charge you with a crime. Right,
[1:06:35] Speaker 3: so that was probably about twenty four months. Twenty twenty
[1:06:39] Speaker 3: four months, right, your funds are frozen and in the meantime.
[1:06:42] Speaker 1: There so you're not in a sent until proven guilty though, no,
[1:06:45] Speaker 1: absolutely not. Well you're the way they get around that,
[1:06:47] Speaker 1: as your money is not. But nonetheless, I mean they
[1:06:51] Speaker 1: they threw you in the slammer because they considered you
[1:06:53] Speaker 1: a flight risk. So how long are you cooling your
[1:06:55] Speaker 1: heels in prison? Fourteen months?
[1:06:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, they considered me a flight risk because huh, listen
[1:07:00] Speaker 2: to this, because I speak Arabic. They didn't say anything
[1:07:03] Speaker 2: about Norwegian. I guess you speak Norwegian, you're not a
[1:07:06] Speaker 2: flight risk. So anyway, because I speak Arabic. And two
[1:07:09] Speaker 2: they said I bribed Taliban officials and there's silence in crickets.
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: How do you bribe a Taliban official? Because what's his name? Ross?
[1:07:21] Speaker 2: I think is Brian Ross. ABC investigative reporter wrote an
[1:07:26] Speaker 2: article saying that unnamed sources said American International Security Court,
[1:07:32] Speaker 2: which is my company, paid a few hundred dollars to
[1:07:36] Speaker 2: bribe garbs to look the other way so the New
[1:07:39] Speaker 2: York Times reporter could escape. So based on that, judge says,
[1:07:46] Speaker 2: you're a flight risk because you're a danger to the
[1:07:48] Speaker 2: community because you bribe foreign officials. I don't know if
[1:07:52] Speaker 2: a t this isn't writing. This will wear at war
[1:07:55] Speaker 2: with the Talibani, right, this is the judge's decision writing.
[1:07:58] Speaker 3: And so basically, you paid your company at you know,
[1:08:05] Speaker 3: paid guards to look the other way while the journalists
[1:08:08] Speaker 3: they escaped, And that's paying.
[1:08:11] Speaker 2: That's so that's the reason to keep you detained. So yeah,
[1:08:17] Speaker 2: because if they don't have a strong case, it's a
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: white collar case. You get out on bail, personal recognizance.
[1:08:22] Speaker 2: It's a white collar case. No violence here, no drugs,
[1:08:25] Speaker 2: no guns, none of that stuff. What's the problem. The
[1:08:28] Speaker 2: problem is they got a weak case, so they got
[1:08:30] Speaker 2: to put as much pressure as possible where and here
[1:08:32] Speaker 2: here's the big kicker. Now this is a real kick
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: in the gut. They said, plead guilty any charge you want. Okay,
[1:08:39] Speaker 2: I'm gonna plead guilty to the violation of Procurement Integrity Act.
[1:08:43] Speaker 2: You know why because it was dismissed. So give me
[1:08:47] Speaker 2: my two million dollars back and I'll play guilty to that.
[1:08:51] Speaker 2: So that's what the deal was with.
[1:08:57] Speaker 3: Do you know where they developed this hard on? Like
[1:09:00] Speaker 3: did some other company try to sink you? What I
[1:09:03] Speaker 3: think is that investigators start going down the path, right,
[1:09:07] Speaker 3: and they don't stop. They put so much work into it,
[1:09:09] Speaker 3: they don't want it, so much time and money into
[1:09:12] Speaker 3: it that they're not going to stop, right, And you
[1:09:14] Speaker 3: know what, what do they care?
[1:09:16] Speaker 2: Right? What did they care? We caught you, We got
[1:09:18] Speaker 2: the transcripts. Now these all transcribed you lied under oath.
[1:09:22] Speaker 2: They got promotions afterwards, right because they were guilty verdicts.
[1:09:27] Speaker 2: That's justice in America.
[1:09:29] Speaker 1: Did that I got to ask? I mean, did that
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: feel like a big kick in the balls? Not just
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: because of that, but because you had done a lot
[1:09:35] Speaker 1: of work with federal law enforcement? You try to work
[1:09:38] Speaker 1: with these guys over the years, and then the way
[1:09:40] Speaker 1: they kind of came at you like this, I mean,
[1:09:42] Speaker 1: did that kind of embitter you?
[1:09:44] Speaker 2: I guess absolutely, of course I did. Yeah, absolutely. You
[1:09:47] Speaker 2: know when they said we're investigating this, and when I
[1:09:50] Speaker 2: first heard about it, I blew it off. I laughed, Yeah, Well,
[1:09:53] Speaker 2: they're good investigators, they'll figure it out. I'm not worried.
[1:09:56] Speaker 2: I'm not worried at all. And I said that based
[1:09:58] Speaker 2: on my experience with investigators and prosecutors. Right, nothing's going
[1:10:02] Speaker 2: to come of this. Yeah, I wasn't worried at that.
[1:10:05] Speaker 2: They'll figure it out. These guys are smart.
[1:10:08] Speaker 1: No.
[1:10:08] Speaker 3: What what What I don't understand though, is because the government,
[1:10:12] Speaker 3: the government went after a number of especially smaller like
[1:10:15] Speaker 3: the government did't go after Haliburn obviously, right, they don't
[1:10:17] Speaker 3: go they don't go after of course they go after
[1:10:20] Speaker 3: these smaller companies because I have a friend whose company
[1:10:22] Speaker 3: they went after. But it was a civil case. I think,
[1:10:26] Speaker 3: you know, I mean I don't maybe it was criminal,
[1:10:29] Speaker 3: but but why did they go after you as an
[1:10:31] Speaker 3: individual instead of just like you're like you as as
[1:10:36] Speaker 3: the company as a company.
[1:10:37] Speaker 2: They did for civil as they went after the company also,
[1:10:40] Speaker 2: But how do you get Yeah, I just you know,
[1:10:45] Speaker 2: when you look, I think I'm getting angry for you, right, Yeah,
[1:10:48] Speaker 2: I think I think And in my opinion, grand juries
[1:10:53] Speaker 2: were created way back when for prosecutors who were ethically
[1:11:01] Speaker 2: right and honest and presented true evidence. And now let's
[1:11:05] Speaker 2: say you know you can indict a ham sandwich. Why
[1:11:07] Speaker 2: is that is it because the prosecutors aren't being ethically
[1:11:11] Speaker 2: honest not telling them a scoop. It's pretty pretty simple
[1:11:14] Speaker 2: to convince, you know, a group of people who don't
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: necessarily want to be sitting in that jury room to
[1:11:20] Speaker 2: go ahead and give me a yes vote to indicts.
[1:11:22] Speaker 1: Or know all the intricacies, very complicated intricacies of security contract.
[1:11:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's not a lot of prosecutors that know
[1:11:29] Speaker 2: government contracting because these prosecutors didn't know government contracting right,
[1:11:34] Speaker 2: And the special asient from the Inspector General's office he
[1:11:39] Speaker 2: didn't know very well either. And it's pretty sad that
[1:11:42] Speaker 2: when their own expert they go to says, is the
[1:11:46] Speaker 2: question by the Department of Defense Inspector General agent was
[1:11:51] Speaker 2: were they making too much profit? Well, your own expert
[1:11:55] Speaker 2: in writing says no, it's a firm fixed price. That
[1:11:58] Speaker 2: means the companies stick in the real we took the risk. Yeah,
[1:12:02] Speaker 2: not the government. We take the risk because if it
[1:12:05] Speaker 2: goes over, we pay for it.
[1:12:07] Speaker 1: So hello, So fourteen months overall you get out, And
[1:12:14] Speaker 1: is that when you start going into other entrepreneurial endeavors.
[1:12:17] Speaker 2: No, Actually, what happened was when I got out, I
[1:12:20] Speaker 2: got contacted to help on another undercover operation in the
[1:12:24] Speaker 2: Middle East.
[1:12:25] Speaker 1: Even after all that, the government came back to you
[1:12:27] Speaker 1: and wanted your help.
[1:12:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, did you do it? I did? Yeah, I did.
[1:12:32] Speaker 1: What was that?
[1:12:33] Speaker 2: And it was successful? It was just some wing nuts
[1:12:38] Speaker 2: ripping off visa for like seven hundred million dollars, just
[1:12:42] Speaker 2: you know, scamming stuff. And I knew this from before
[1:12:45] Speaker 2: when I was doing investigative work and undercover stuff in Egypt.
[1:12:51] Speaker 2: You know, after the fall of Cadaffi. There were a
[1:12:53] Speaker 2: whole bunch of problems that arose out of that. Yeah.
[1:12:57] Speaker 2: But yeah, after that, that case, the violation of Procurement
[1:13:01] Speaker 2: Integrity Act. Come on, Really, that's dismissed and you're gonna
[1:13:04] Speaker 2: let somebody plead guilty to that doesn't make sense. So
[1:13:08] Speaker 2: I had to go to my priest later and ask
[1:13:10] Speaker 2: for forgiveness because I swore that I did that when
[1:13:13] Speaker 2: I didn't. And I had to do that just as
[1:13:16] Speaker 2: a business perspective to finish it and get out of jail.
[1:13:19] Speaker 2: So that's justice in America, unfortunately. And how does a
[1:13:25] Speaker 2: judge recuse herself her buddy is my lawyer, He gets
[1:13:30] Speaker 2: off the case, says he's too busy. How convenient is
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: that now we didn't know the relationship. It goes to
[1:13:37] Speaker 2: another judge and we start to process. With the other judge.
[1:13:42] Speaker 2: That lawyer says, we're too busy. Big law firm, get
[1:13:46] Speaker 2: a new lawyer, local council, and then she takes the
[1:13:50] Speaker 2: case back, which is a violation in their own local rules.
[1:13:54] Speaker 2: It's bizarre, isn't there something thinks there? Yeah? Yeah, yeah
[1:13:59] Speaker 2: for sure. And oh, by the way, her husband was
[1:14:03] Speaker 2: a general counsel for that law firm.
[1:14:08] Speaker 1: So after all this you go back start doing some
[1:14:10] Speaker 1: undercover work for the government again. Now we're now we're
[1:14:12] Speaker 1: into the Arab spring. It sounds like around that time frame,
[1:14:15] Speaker 1: just after just after yeah, yeah, just after I banged
[1:14:19] Speaker 1: that out quick. But then I was working mainly on
[1:14:22] Speaker 1: vitamin one, a new drink that I've gotten right here.
[1:14:25] Speaker 1: Why don't you tell folks about your company?
[1:14:27] Speaker 3: It's delicious. I'm just gonna say this right.
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: And you can get it on Amazon. What happened was
[1:14:32] Speaker 2: in Iraq. You know they had the big the big
[1:14:37] Speaker 2: pits out there, the wooden pits, the like fire pits. No,
[1:14:43] Speaker 2: not the fire pit, like the burn pit. No, not
[1:14:46] Speaker 2: a burn pit. A bit like a big box. Oh yeah,
[1:14:48] Speaker 2: the big as box. Yeah yeah, filled with gatoring. Yeah,
[1:14:52] Speaker 2: and we're all drinking gatory. We bring it back somewhere
[1:14:54] Speaker 2: and put it in the refrigerator and drink gatoray. Yeah.
[1:14:56] Speaker 2: We're cramping up. Ye know. It's one hundred and twenty
[1:14:59] Speaker 2: and forty degrees during the summer there. Yeah, and we're
[1:15:02] Speaker 2: cramping up and we couldn't figure out why. And one
[1:15:05] Speaker 2: of the flight surgeons told us, you guys are eating
[1:15:08] Speaker 2: too much cake. So Doc, look at it. These are abs.
[1:15:10] Speaker 2: It looks like we're eating cake. No, we figured out
[1:15:13] Speaker 2: was the sugar in the gatorade. Yeah, so that's where
[1:15:16] Speaker 2: I got the idea to make vitamin one. So this
[1:15:18] Speaker 2: has got the electrolytes in it, it's got the good vitamins,
[1:15:21] Speaker 2: and it's got no sugar, so we don't have that issue.
[1:15:24] Speaker 2: And it's clear, no artificial coloring, and it actually tastes great,
[1:15:28] Speaker 2: all natural flavor.
[1:15:29] Speaker 3: So it does taste great. Now, I'll tell you one
[1:15:30] Speaker 3: of the things I love about this is it like
[1:15:32] Speaker 3: you about you know, you talk about gatoray or power
[1:15:34] Speaker 3: there these other things like when you're really hot, they're
[1:15:37] Speaker 3: like thick, their syrupy like they're they're like they're not refreshing. Yeah,
[1:15:41] Speaker 3: you know, I mean I used to cut mine, you know,
[1:15:44] Speaker 3: with water because they're not refreshing. These This is really light,
[1:15:48] Speaker 3: like I don't know if you guys see, but it's like,
[1:15:49] Speaker 3: like like you said, it's clear, it's delicious, it's light,
[1:15:53] Speaker 3: and it has Yeah, it's fantastic, it really is.
[1:15:56] Speaker 2: So yeah, I've been focused on that. We were shipping
[1:15:59] Speaker 2: overseas to cut the ar Lebanon UAE pre pandemic, but
[1:16:04] Speaker 2: then after the pandemic happened, you know, the pricing for
[1:16:07] Speaker 2: shipping containers went through the roof, and to ship to
[1:16:10] Speaker 2: the Gulf coast countries you got to ship in refrigerated containers.
[1:16:15] Speaker 2: So instead of a normal forty foot container, you gotta
[1:16:17] Speaker 2: it's got to be refrigerated, and that's usually double the price.
[1:16:20] Speaker 2: So now you're talking somewhere between six and ten thousand
[1:16:23] Speaker 2: dollars to ship a container. So what we're gonna start
[1:16:26] Speaker 2: doing in the near future with the company, probably in
[1:16:28] Speaker 2: the next sixty days, is start manufacturing over there. That
[1:16:32] Speaker 2: way we don't have that cost transportation.
[1:16:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, and for our viewers, I mean, where's the best
[1:16:39] Speaker 1: place to go and purchase these if they're interesting.
[1:16:41] Speaker 2: Amazon. Yeah, it's on Amazon. It's a it's a good
[1:16:45] Speaker 2: ready to drink on Amazon. And we're also up in
[1:16:48] Speaker 2: New England. We're in the market basket supermarkets. So we're
[1:16:51] Speaker 2: always looking for more and more distributors. But it's a
[1:16:54] Speaker 2: it's a tough, tough competition here because Coke and Pepsi
[1:16:57] Speaker 2: and Doctor Pepper Snapple they dominate everything. They dominate everything.
[1:17:03] Speaker 1: So while you're, you know, involved in this entrepreneurial effort,
[1:17:06] Speaker 1: you're starting your vitamin one company, somewhere along this timeframe
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: you get contacted by Carlos gun or his people. How
[1:17:17] Speaker 1: did that come about for you?
[1:17:20] Speaker 2: Oh? I never heard of him before.
[1:17:23] Speaker 1: It's not what I read the newspapers.
[1:17:26] Speaker 2: Well, you can't believe everything you read. Well, it's funny
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: I got. You know, I was bitter from the judicial
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: system that I went through because I was pissed off
[1:17:35] Speaker 2: about it. You know how many criminals, if you're really
[1:17:38] Speaker 2: a criminal, offered to take a polygraph, right and then
[1:17:41] Speaker 2: they say, well, we can't you know, use that in court.
[1:17:45] Speaker 2: It's not admissible. Bullshit, use it as an investigative tool.
[1:17:48] Speaker 2: Come on, hook me up. I didn't do anything wrong.
[1:17:50] Speaker 2: Hook me up. I'm not doing it anyways. So I
[1:17:54] Speaker 2: had a bad taste in my mouth about that, and
[1:17:56] Speaker 2: then I get a call from a guy that's saying, hey,
[1:18:00] Speaker 2: we need some help. Can you help us get somebody
[1:18:05] Speaker 2: out of somewhere. Okay, yeah, sure, when you want it
[1:18:10] Speaker 2: done tonight five o'clock. Yeah, no problem, that's literally, can
[1:18:14] Speaker 2: you help us get somebody out of somewhere. I don't
[1:18:16] Speaker 2: know what are you talking about. So I found out
[1:18:20] Speaker 2: that there were two couples that I know over I
[1:18:23] Speaker 2: don't know if it's an Alman Jordan or in Baby
[1:18:25] Speaker 2: Lebanon that we're talking. And one of the wives said
[1:18:29] Speaker 2: to the other three, if my husband was ever kidnapped,
[1:18:33] Speaker 2: i'd call Mike Taylor because he would get him back
[1:18:36] Speaker 2: for me. That's how the person says, oh, I know him,
[1:18:40] Speaker 2: I can call him. So that person called me and said, hey,
[1:18:44] Speaker 2: we've got this problem. Anyways. I said, you got to
[1:18:46] Speaker 2: give me more information, you know. Next day gave me
[1:18:50] Speaker 2: more information. He told me this guy Carlos Goosuni's over
[1:18:53] Speaker 2: in Japan. He got set up. He's being tortured. He's
[1:18:57] Speaker 2: out right now, but he's being tortured. They held him
[1:18:59] Speaker 2: for twenty two days, then they charge them with another crime,
[1:19:02] Speaker 2: so they can hold them for another twenty two days.
[1:19:04] Speaker 2: And then after forty four days go they charge them
[1:19:07] Speaker 2: with another crimes. Just a jokman, and they keep him
[1:19:09] Speaker 2: in solitary confinement. And you know, he's got to sleep
[1:19:12] Speaker 2: on the floor. You know, he gets two showers a week,
[1:19:14] Speaker 2: so on and so forth. Okay, And then I met
[1:19:18] Speaker 2: his wife. It was a very nice lady, and of
[1:19:22] Speaker 2: course she was distraught over it, and it's her husband's
[1:19:25] Speaker 2: over there. And one of the things that really got
[1:19:27] Speaker 2: under my skin about this is that the Japanese court
[1:19:32] Speaker 2: told Carlos, You're not even allowed to speak to your wife.
[1:19:37] Speaker 2: That's part of your bail condition.
[1:19:39] Speaker 3: Right.
[1:19:40] Speaker 2: What do you mean you can't speak to his Tryconian,
[1:19:43] Speaker 2: You can't talk to her on the phone, you can't
[1:19:45] Speaker 2: see her, you can't speak to her.
[1:19:48] Speaker 1: What is this?
[1:19:49] Speaker 2: That sounds like something Saddam Hussein? Would you know put
[1:19:52] Speaker 2: it as a bail condition? Or North Korea? Yeah?
[1:19:54] Speaker 3: Real quick, can you give us a brief background on class?
[1:19:59] Speaker 3: There's always was he just some guy who is tagging
[1:20:02] Speaker 3: wall spray painting.
[1:20:03] Speaker 2: No, no, no, A good point. Carlinos goes On was
[1:20:07] Speaker 2: the chairman of Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi all at the
[1:20:11] Speaker 2: same time. And it's my understanding that part of this
[1:20:15] Speaker 2: was set up because Renault, a French company, was taking
[1:20:19] Speaker 2: over a large portion of Nissan their shares, and from
[1:20:24] Speaker 2: internally this had been going on, this investigation that they
[1:20:27] Speaker 2: had set up against Carlos and Greg Kelly, the American
[1:20:31] Speaker 2: attorney for him, which ultimately resulted in a coup d'tah
[1:20:35] Speaker 2: if you will, where Carlos went into Tokyo and Greg
[1:20:40] Speaker 2: Kelly came in because they said it was an emergency meeting,
[1:20:44] Speaker 2: They'll send the corporate jet form. Greg Kelly said, I
[1:20:46] Speaker 2: really can't because I gotta have back surgery in a
[1:20:48] Speaker 2: couple of days and Thanksgivings coming up. They said, please, please,
[1:20:51] Speaker 2: please please send the plane over. He did, you know,
[1:20:54] Speaker 2: the honorable thing, and said, yes, there's work to be done.
[1:20:57] Speaker 2: I'll do it. Jumped on a plane, went over there.
[1:20:58] Speaker 2: They rested them both, throw them both in solitary confinement,
[1:21:02] Speaker 2: and uh, Greg Kelly short end of it. They charged
[1:21:07] Speaker 2: him with four different crimes.
[1:21:10] Speaker 3: Uh.
[1:21:10] Speaker 2: Three and a half years later his trial happened and
[1:21:15] Speaker 2: he was found guilty only one three not guilty. So
[1:21:20] Speaker 2: I don't know if he was really guilty of that one.
[1:21:23] Speaker 2: Maybe they're just trying to say face. Anyway, I took
[1:21:26] Speaker 2: three and a half years. I don't know, just I
[1:21:29] Speaker 2: don't know what the crimes were, like, uh, you know,
[1:21:33] Speaker 2: misuse of funds or something along those lines, you know,
[1:21:36] Speaker 2: and you know, violation of the confidence of the shareholders
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: or you know, misappropriation of money, things like this. So
[1:21:46] Speaker 2: but anyways, you're gonna put people in solitary confinement torture
[1:21:49] Speaker 2: them for this. So that's what they did. They did
[1:21:52] Speaker 2: it to him. So anyways, they asked me to help.
[1:21:54] Speaker 2: I met with the wife several times, wonderful lady, and
[1:21:59] Speaker 2: and the up saying okay, I'll do it, I'll get
[1:22:01] Speaker 2: him out. Remember at the time, I was still bitter
[1:22:04] Speaker 2: and pissed off about my experience, and I thought it
[1:22:07] Speaker 2: was very unfair. Today I think it's unfair, and i'd
[1:22:09] Speaker 2: sit with the judge and tell the judge that, and
[1:22:11] Speaker 2: tell those the prosecutor knows it. Prosecutor call one of
[1:22:15] Speaker 2: my attorneys afterwards, said we're so sorry about this, so
[1:22:18] Speaker 2: many mistakes bullshit. If you're sorry, you stand up and
[1:22:20] Speaker 2: do the right thing. A bunch of cowards. Anyways, I
[1:22:24] Speaker 2: felt bad and I said, I'll do it. I'll get
[1:22:26] Speaker 2: the guy out. And I did. I got him out.
[1:22:30] Speaker 2: I planned it. The operation was absolutely perfect. It was
[1:22:35] Speaker 2: smooth without a glitch, and I pulled him out like
[1:22:39] Speaker 2: I said I would do. And he's free and clear
[1:22:42] Speaker 2: and living on living all life.
[1:22:43] Speaker 3: Can you can you share the details of how you
[1:22:49] Speaker 3: got him out or are you willing to do that?
[1:22:50] Speaker 1: Sure?
[1:22:51] Speaker 2: Well, you know he's so well known. Everywhere he goes,
[1:22:56] Speaker 2: somebody knows him. He goes to have a dinner somewhere, lunch,
[1:22:59] Speaker 2: everybody hello, mister Going. They call him going over there,
[1:23:02] Speaker 2: mister Going. He's a guy that I think he was
[1:23:07] Speaker 2: born in Lebanon, raised some in Brazil, and he's got
[1:23:12] Speaker 2: the French citizenship also, so he's the Lebanese citizen, Brazilian citizen,
[1:23:17] Speaker 2: and French citizenship. So I couldn't just walk him on
[1:23:23] Speaker 2: an airplane and get him out because he's so well known.
[1:23:27] Speaker 2: So I came out with a plan where I got
[1:23:30] Speaker 2: to hide him. So I thought about a mask. Mask's
[1:23:33] Speaker 2: not going to work. I said, Okay, I got the idea.
[1:23:37] Speaker 2: I'll rent the Lisa aircraft. I'll fly over there. Take
[1:23:41] Speaker 2: a music box. You know that they use for stage hands,
[1:23:44] Speaker 2: the stage boxes. I'll build one of those. I've got
[1:23:47] Speaker 2: to make sure it's custom built so it fits in
[1:23:48] Speaker 2: the cargo of the airplane. Got to make sure. I
[1:23:51] Speaker 2: check which airplane I'm getting, so I know the cargo
[1:23:53] Speaker 2: size to fit it in properly. I had it so
[1:23:56] Speaker 2: it was only about one centimeter the box one centimeter
[1:24:00] Speaker 2: short enough to fit in, so it fit in perfect.
[1:24:04] Speaker 2: And then I'll go over and he's in Tokyo. I'll
[1:24:08] Speaker 2: land in Osaka. Because I did the vulnerability assessment on
[1:24:11] Speaker 2: the airports. There's no security in the way out in Japan.
[1:24:15] Speaker 2: Only on the way in, no security. And I made
[1:24:19] Speaker 2: the box big enough anyway where a wooden foot fit
[1:24:21] Speaker 2: through the X ray machines, their xt ray machines. Because
[1:24:24] Speaker 2: the box was too big, and I left it open.
[1:24:27] Speaker 2: No locks on it. You put locks on it? What
[1:24:30] Speaker 2: do people think? There must be some important shit in there.
[1:24:33] Speaker 2: Don't put a lock on it. So I would landing
[1:24:37] Speaker 2: in Osaka, I took the boxes to my hotel, checked in,
[1:24:40] Speaker 2: put the boxes there. The Japanese cargo people from the
[1:24:46] Speaker 2: private airport are the ones that moved it for me,
[1:24:48] Speaker 2: and I jumped on a bullet train, went to Tokyo,
[1:24:52] Speaker 2: linked up with Carlos. Let's go, U has special forces
[1:24:56] Speaker 2: here to rescue you. Let's go home, put them on
[1:24:59] Speaker 2: a train, went back. You hit a mask, glasses and
[1:25:01] Speaker 2: a hat, and everybody over in Japan wear's the mask.
[1:25:04] Speaker 2: This was before COVID hit, but they still wore masks
[1:25:09] Speaker 2: and took the three hour train ride back.
[1:25:13] Speaker 3: Now it's he on house the rest at the time
[1:25:14] Speaker 3: or no, no, no, he was just on bail.
[1:25:16] Speaker 2: Okay, so he could travel anywhere within the country for
[1:25:19] Speaker 2: I think it was like forty eight or seventy two hours.
[1:25:22] Speaker 2: Were telling the prosecutor as long as he stayed within
[1:25:25] Speaker 2: the jurisdiction of Japan, so he could travel around US.
[1:25:28] Speaker 2: So being on the train is not a big deal.
[1:25:30] Speaker 2: So what on the train? So he went down to
[1:25:32] Speaker 2: Osaka on the bullet train. The bullet trains are great,
[1:25:35] Speaker 2: by the way. They're smooth and they're fast, a little
[1:25:37] Speaker 2: bit crowded, and the food they sell on it's horrible.
[1:25:42] Speaker 2: Went into my hotel where he still had his camouflage on.
[1:25:47] Speaker 2: He said, okay, we're gonna leave at twenty two hundred.
[1:25:51] Speaker 2: That's ten o'clock for non military people. And I said, okay,
[1:25:56] Speaker 2: we're gonna wait a little bit. The people from the
[1:25:59] Speaker 2: airport showed up in the vans at ten pm. I said,
[1:26:03] Speaker 2: we're gonna wait so we can be a little bit
[1:26:05] Speaker 2: late now. I had gone over to the airport about
[1:26:09] Speaker 2: an hour before, at nine o'clock to tell the lady,
[1:26:12] Speaker 2: the manager, we've got to make sure that we leave
[1:26:16] Speaker 2: on time. I can't be late because I got an
[1:26:18] Speaker 2: important meeting in Istanbul. I was looking for surveillance or
[1:26:23] Speaker 2: any extra law enforcement or anything going on. That's what
[1:26:26] Speaker 2: I was was doing a ricon and then I went
[1:26:30] Speaker 2: back to the hotel, saw him. The people are there.
[1:26:33] Speaker 2: I said, let them wait. We got to be late,
[1:26:36] Speaker 2: so we're late. Japanese are very very punctual. If everything's sop,
[1:26:42] Speaker 2: they don't think outside the box. If it's not in
[1:26:45] Speaker 2: the sop, we're in deep shit. That's how they are.
[1:26:49] Speaker 2: They're just like robots. And of course they said, mentality
[1:26:53] Speaker 2: is just the opposite, so we're going to be intentionally late.
[1:26:56] Speaker 2: I tell them we're going to be like twelve minutes late.
[1:26:59] Speaker 2: So they're down stairs, you know, going through a panic,
[1:27:01] Speaker 2: and I said, okay, now we can go. Get in
[1:27:03] Speaker 2: the box, threw a bed sheet on him, shut the box,
[1:27:06] Speaker 2: rolled them downstairs.
[1:27:07] Speaker 1: Bottle of water, some food.
[1:27:08] Speaker 2: No, no, no, I had drilled holes in there. He
[1:27:10] Speaker 2: don't need food. He's not gonna be there very long.
[1:27:13] Speaker 2: I don't need any food. So and then he might
[1:27:17] Speaker 2: be drinking. Then he's got to piss. Right, Well, then
[1:27:18] Speaker 2: we got a problem, right, So I had drilled holes
[1:27:21] Speaker 2: in the bottom so he could breathe, so there's plenty
[1:27:22] Speaker 2: of oxygen. So then I rolled them downstairs, put him
[1:27:26] Speaker 2: in the elevator down, went to the lobbyist. Come the
[1:27:29] Speaker 2: Japanese people took the take case. They couldn't lift it
[1:27:33] Speaker 2: and put it in the back of the van. So
[1:27:36] Speaker 2: I'm the VIP. I'm the guy with the private jet.
[1:27:39] Speaker 2: I'm not supposed to be doing this stuff. I'm supposed
[1:27:41] Speaker 2: to be, you know, somebody special. So I got like
[1:27:44] Speaker 2: eight Japanese guys on one side. I'm on the other side.
[1:27:46] Speaker 2: We lift the box up because Cardlinos was in it.
[1:27:49] Speaker 2: So we lift the box up. They couldn't get it
[1:27:51] Speaker 2: in the van. So we finally get in the van,
[1:27:52] Speaker 2: shut the door, jump into two vans and we go
[1:27:55] Speaker 2: back to the airport. It's great, everything's there. The same
[1:27:58] Speaker 2: immigration guy that was there in the morning. We arrived
[1:28:00] Speaker 2: at ten in the morning, thirty ten was there, same
[1:28:04] Speaker 2: policeman with a nasty, little old revolver, looked like it
[1:28:07] Speaker 2: came out of World War Two. Still there and that
[1:28:11] Speaker 2: was it. And you know, I threw my rucksack on
[1:28:14] Speaker 2: the X ray machine, say hey, let's go, and said no, no, no, no, no.
[1:28:18] Speaker 2: You guys are in a hurry beside. No no screening,
[1:28:20] Speaker 2: no security check on outside when you guys are leaving,
[1:28:23] Speaker 2: no security check. Said okay, great, let's go push the
[1:28:27] Speaker 2: big box with cardinals in it. And I had another
[1:28:29] Speaker 2: smaller box. Pushed the two boxes through from the van.
[1:28:32] Speaker 2: On the airplane. The jet was a Global Express. They
[1:28:36] Speaker 2: put the conveyor belt for the luggage up to it.
[1:28:39] Speaker 2: It was about a three foot gap here. They didn't
[1:28:41] Speaker 2: know how to drive the conveyor belt very well. So
[1:28:45] Speaker 2: there's a guy, a little Japanese kid, that goes in
[1:28:48] Speaker 2: a cargo. He's trying to lift the box. He's got
[1:28:50] Speaker 2: a better chance out of lunch with God lifting that box.
[1:28:54] Speaker 2: So I tell hey, hey, you know, hop scene come
[1:28:56] Speaker 2: here go go go over there. You get out of here.
[1:28:59] Speaker 2: Get out. So I lift the box up and I
[1:29:01] Speaker 2: got like eight jap and he's pushing the other side.
[1:29:04] Speaker 2: So we had to get over that three foot gap.
[1:29:05] Speaker 2: We got it in, no problem. Sit in. I had
[1:29:08] Speaker 2: the pilot he come shut this door. Make sure it's
[1:29:10] Speaker 2: sealed properly. So the pilot shut the door. We're good
[1:29:13] Speaker 2: to go. Okay. I knock on a box that was
[1:29:16] Speaker 2: our code, and everything's okay. And plus he can hear
[1:29:19] Speaker 2: what's going on, and I'm talking loud enough so he
[1:29:21] Speaker 2: can hear he's inside the box. So we're button up now.
[1:29:25] Speaker 2: It's probably about I had asked the pilots also earlier,
[1:29:29] Speaker 2: can we leave at twenty two thirty? We're supposed to
[1:29:32] Speaker 2: leave at twenty three hundred, said can we leave it
[1:29:34] Speaker 2: twenty two to thirty? They said, okay, no problem. So
[1:29:38] Speaker 2: we're buttoned up by twenty minutes past ten pm, and
[1:29:44] Speaker 2: I said, are we leaving five minutes? They said no,
[1:29:47] Speaker 2: tower won't allow us because we filed the flight plan
[1:29:49] Speaker 2: to leave at eleven. They will make us way till
[1:29:51] Speaker 2: eleven oh pastwards, So we couldn't even turn the engines on,
[1:29:56] Speaker 2: so it was about a quarter to eleven. We're allowed
[1:29:58] Speaker 2: to turn the engines on. Meanwhile, Carlos still down in
[1:30:02] Speaker 2: the hold. No, no, no, he w okay, you got well.
[1:30:04] Speaker 2: Look look he's he's in a cargo. But the cargo
[1:30:07] Speaker 2: is here, then the bathroom's here, and then the cabin's here.
[1:30:10] Speaker 2: It's all on the same gy No, no, no, no,
[1:30:13] Speaker 2: it's all on the same deck. But what happened was
[1:30:15] Speaker 2: once we sealed the door and we got everybody off
[1:30:17] Speaker 2: the airplane and shut that door, I lifted the box
[1:30:21] Speaker 2: Carlos was in. I said, sit tight until we take off.
[1:30:25] Speaker 2: Everything's good, We're golden, don't worry. And I put a
[1:30:28] Speaker 2: towel in there, bathroom towel, just to keep the lid
[1:30:30] Speaker 2: open a little bit more because it was it was
[1:30:32] Speaker 2: tight back there in the cargo area. So I did that,
[1:30:36] Speaker 2: and then we got wheels up right at eleven. They
[1:30:40] Speaker 2: let us right at a twenty three hundred. We were
[1:30:43] Speaker 2: wheels up. See you later, okay. And I went back
[1:30:45] Speaker 2: through the bathroom, a little bathroom, and to open it up.
[1:30:49] Speaker 2: Carlos had gotten himself out of the box and was
[1:30:52] Speaker 2: sitting on top of it. I said, okay, great, we're
[1:30:54] Speaker 2: good to go, buddy. All done. So it was probably
[1:30:59] Speaker 2: about ied to just sit here. I mean a few
[1:31:00] Speaker 2: minutes too. We get stable at thirty thousand feet. Wait
[1:31:03] Speaker 2: a few minutes, so we got up the thirty four
[1:31:05] Speaker 2: thousand feet cruising speed and I lad told him, look,
[1:31:08] Speaker 2: you know, don't go over, don't go over Europe, go
[1:31:12] Speaker 2: over Russia, over China and Russia, because if we have
[1:31:15] Speaker 2: the emergency we got to go down. I'd rather go
[1:31:17] Speaker 2: down in Russia or China because they don't like Japan,
[1:31:20] Speaker 2: so we should be okay there. So anyways, that's the
[1:31:23] Speaker 2: flight path we took. And then once we got stable
[1:31:26] Speaker 2: at cruising altitude at thirty four thousand, I went back
[1:31:29] Speaker 2: said come on out. He came out and you know,
[1:31:31] Speaker 2: sat and we were talking and done deal. Get to Istanbul, Turkey,
[1:31:36] Speaker 2: bright and early like o dark thirty maybe zero fourish.
[1:31:40] Speaker 2: I had another aircraft there waiting for him, a smaller
[1:31:42] Speaker 2: private jet. I put him in it and transferred him.
[1:31:46] Speaker 2: He went with you know, one other guy, a local Turk,
[1:31:50] Speaker 2: and off to eleven on he went, and I went
[1:31:52] Speaker 2: over to the commercial airport. Took about a forty minute
[1:31:56] Speaker 2: ride to the commercial airport. I got my visa a
[1:32:00] Speaker 2: private airport, went over to commercial airport, jumped on a
[1:32:02] Speaker 2: commercial flight when into Bay Route. Mission was a success,
[1:32:08] Speaker 2: and so Carlos pops up in Beayrout Like how long
[1:32:11] Speaker 2: after the rescue, because I mean, this became like a
[1:32:15] Speaker 2: huge international news story. Like I'll say I pulled him
[1:32:19] Speaker 2: out on December twenty ninth, twenty nineteen, and December thirtieth,
[1:32:31] Speaker 2: he was in Beayroute. He arrived maybe like seven in
[1:32:36] Speaker 2: the morning, and media probably knew by an hour later,
[1:32:45] Speaker 2: maybe eight in the morning, that he was there. It's
[1:32:48] Speaker 2: a bayroote. Everybody knows everybody.
[1:32:50] Speaker 1: Were you hoping to keep it quieter a little while
[1:32:52] Speaker 1: longer before this?
[1:32:53] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, at least until I got back into Bay Route. Yeah,
[1:32:57] Speaker 2: at least a few more hours. But look, I knew,
[1:33:00] Speaker 2: you know, the world's gonna sit up and take notice
[1:33:02] Speaker 2: this guy's back in Lebanon. That part's okay because you
[1:33:06] Speaker 2: know he's not gonna hide himself.
[1:33:08] Speaker 3: Right, But and Lebanon he felt like Lebanon's non extradition
[1:33:11] Speaker 3: in Japan, like he felt.
[1:33:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And they're don't extra dight their citizens unlike
[1:33:16] Speaker 2: the United States.
[1:33:18] Speaker 1: So there is there is one other like wrinkle in
[1:33:20] Speaker 1: all of this that I have to bring up because
[1:33:22] Speaker 1: it comes up later, is your son's alleged involvement.
[1:33:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, and all of it.
[1:33:28] Speaker 1: What was was he there in Japan with you?
[1:33:31] Speaker 2: Like? What was his Let me tell you what he
[1:33:33] Speaker 2: did in his involvement. Sure, he was doing search engine
[1:33:37] Speaker 2: optimization for Carlos, so all the media was coming out,
[1:33:42] Speaker 2: he was boosting the good articles to push down the
[1:33:45] Speaker 2: bad articles. That's what his focus was there. The mistake
[1:33:50] Speaker 2: that was made was he had Carlos. He'd go visit
[1:33:55] Speaker 2: Carlos several times in Japan and met with him in
[1:33:57] Speaker 2: his lawyer's office, on and so forth. He had this
[1:34:02] Speaker 2: hotel room when Carlos came the day of December twenty ninth,
[1:34:09] Speaker 2: Peter came to meet me to show me where his
[1:34:12] Speaker 2: hotel room was in the lobby, and Carlos had changed
[1:34:16] Speaker 2: clothes in his room. Peter didn't know it. So because
[1:34:20] Speaker 2: of that, they charged Peter with a crime for assisting
[1:34:24] Speaker 2: in bell jumping. So you get back. But Peter actually
[1:34:29] Speaker 2: left the country before. He didn't know we were leaving
[1:34:32] Speaker 2: that day. He didn't even know I was coming to
[1:34:34] Speaker 2: Japan that day until I called him when I was
[1:34:37] Speaker 2: in Japan, a basic opsec.
[1:34:40] Speaker 1: Right, why did you bring him over there? Though he
[1:34:43] Speaker 1: could have done SEO stuff from back home?
[1:34:45] Speaker 2: Right, The timing had nothing to do with each other.
[1:34:48] Speaker 2: We didn't know he was going over there on his own.
[1:34:50] Speaker 2: He was going over there on his own anyway. We
[1:34:51] Speaker 2: didn't know we could get the airplane until that day,
[1:34:54] Speaker 2: December twenty ninth, December twenty eighth, when I knew I
[1:34:58] Speaker 2: could get the aircraft in six hours the next morning.
[1:35:01] Speaker 3: And in Japan, if you get charged with a crime,
[1:35:03] Speaker 3: you're pretty much going to be well.
[1:35:07] Speaker 2: The Japanese judicial system has a ninety nine point four
[1:35:10] Speaker 2: percent conviction rate. That's higher than North Korea. Right, that's
[1:35:14] Speaker 2: higher than Russia. That's higher than Iran, ninety nine point
[1:35:19] Speaker 2: four percent.
[1:35:21] Speaker 1: And I we'll get we'll get into that. We'll touch
[1:35:25] Speaker 1: on that again in a moment. But so you get
[1:35:28] Speaker 1: to Beirut, and then if you're heading back home from there.
[1:35:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to head back home, but the
[1:35:35] Speaker 2: news broke and somehow or another, uh, my name leaked
[1:35:40] Speaker 2: and I had news reporters all over me. So I
[1:35:44] Speaker 2: was doing E and E for a little bit.
[1:35:47] Speaker 3: Do you did you ever find out why your name
[1:35:49] Speaker 3: leaked or how you were associated.
[1:35:51] Speaker 1: Yeah, we we think we know why. Yeah, pretty sure.
[1:35:56] Speaker 1: Was it somebody was trying to fuck you?
[1:35:57] Speaker 2: No, I don't think it was. It wasn't intentional. I say, no, no,
[1:36:01] Speaker 2: it wasn't intentional, But.
[1:36:04] Speaker 3: It wasn't It wasn't like like Japanese. The Japanese law
[1:36:10] Speaker 3: enforcement didn't put it all together.
[1:36:13] Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, this was laid out for them
[1:36:14] Speaker 2: on a silver platter by the media.
[1:36:16] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I mean I think that's why, at
[1:36:20] Speaker 1: least part of why they came down so hard on
[1:36:22] Speaker 1: you is because you just embarrassed the Japanese police, made
[1:36:24] Speaker 1: them look like a bunch of chumps the way you
[1:36:26] Speaker 1: got him out of there, so he easily. I think
[1:36:29] Speaker 1: that's a part of it what it is. And it's
[1:36:31] Speaker 1: a face saving you know, uh sort of culture.
[1:36:35] Speaker 2: So here's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. If they didn't
[1:36:38] Speaker 2: torture people, I wouldn't have done it right. So you know, look,
[1:36:43] Speaker 2: I was there. You know my sentence. I couldn't have
[1:36:46] Speaker 2: a trial because I was extradited. I was you know,
[1:36:50] Speaker 2: I was betrayed by my country. Trump and Pompeo, both
[1:36:53] Speaker 2: of them, in my opinion or bags of shit. So
[1:36:56] Speaker 2: and I got no problem saying that to their face either.
[1:36:58] Speaker 1: So let's let's get to that. You get back home,
[1:37:00] Speaker 1: you're trying to like lay low, avoid the media. They
[1:37:03] Speaker 1: keep pounding on your door. What kind of happened? What
[1:37:06] Speaker 1: happens at that point?
[1:37:07] Speaker 2: Media went away eventually because Carlos had a big press
[1:37:11] Speaker 2: conference over there. Media from all over the world was
[1:37:15] Speaker 2: there and he was dealing with the media, so all
[1:37:17] Speaker 2: the media attention was on him now and I was
[1:37:20] Speaker 2: clear nothing going on, but too late January twenty eighth,
[1:37:25] Speaker 2: I believe it was the Japanese issued and arrest warrant
[1:37:28] Speaker 2: for me and Peter. And the next thing was they're
[1:37:32] Speaker 2: going to issue a red notice. I had the lawyers
[1:37:35] Speaker 2: come over. Now I had lawyers before this. Tell me
[1:37:37] Speaker 2: it's not a crime what you're doing. If you're gonna
[1:37:39] Speaker 2: go rescue, it's not a crime. Because when a lot
[1:37:40] Speaker 2: of people don't know, bail jumping in Japan is not
[1:37:43] Speaker 2: a crime. You can jump bail in Japan. It's not
[1:37:46] Speaker 2: a crime. So if you're helping somebody jump bail, how
[1:37:50] Speaker 2: can that be a crime?
[1:37:51] Speaker 1: Right?
[1:37:52] Speaker 2: Okay? All the legal scholars, legal scholars in Japan not
[1:37:57] Speaker 2: all many legal scholars he's in profess an American professor
[1:38:01] Speaker 2: named Clancy over there says still to this day, it's
[1:38:05] Speaker 2: not a crime. It's not a crime. Was never prosecuted.
[1:38:08] Speaker 2: The law they prosecuted us under says, it's article one
[1:38:11] Speaker 2: h three of the Japanese Pinoicle that you cannot help
[1:38:15] Speaker 2: somebody escape custody. Custody means from jail, from the back
[1:38:21] Speaker 2: of a police car, handcuffs, something like that. Prison, that's custody.
[1:38:27] Speaker 2: He's not on bail custody. So if bail jumping's not
[1:38:29] Speaker 2: a crime, how's assisting somebody in a crime. I'll tell
[1:38:34] Speaker 2: you how. Because they spent one hundred and thirty day
[1:38:36] Speaker 2: the Japanese spend one hundred and thirty eight million dollars
[1:38:39] Speaker 2: a year on lobbyist inside the Beltway. That's how it
[1:38:42] Speaker 2: becomes a crime.
[1:38:44] Speaker 1: So they put this arrest warrant out for you.
[1:38:49] Speaker 2: Then the lawyers came and tell me, look, we gotta
[1:38:52] Speaker 2: be careful. If they did an arrest warrant might be
[1:38:54] Speaker 2: a red notice next, So probably best to stay here
[1:38:58] Speaker 2: in Lebanon. I'm not staying here. If we're gonna have
[1:39:02] Speaker 2: a legal battle, I want it in my country where
[1:39:04] Speaker 2: maybe I can get a fair shake. And so I
[1:39:07] Speaker 2: came back to the US and we'll waiting here for it.
[1:39:10] Speaker 2: If we're going to have a battle, let's do it here.
[1:39:12] Speaker 2: Because even all the lawyers that I had here in
[1:39:16] Speaker 2: the US said they'll never extradite you. It's not gonna happen,
[1:39:19] Speaker 2: not for this, because number one, it's really not a crime.
[1:39:22] Speaker 2: At number two, you don't get extradited for little nitinoid
[1:39:25] Speaker 2: things like this, right, you know, like the to cut
[1:39:28] Speaker 2: a airbag thing they had, you know, three Japanese citizens
[1:39:31] Speaker 2: indicted in Michigan in December twenty sixteen, and there's a
[1:39:36] Speaker 2: result of their indictment is they're indicted because to date
[1:39:39] Speaker 2: they've caused twenty nine people to die, twenty nine deaths
[1:39:43] Speaker 2: on their hands, and they weren't extradited. So they're not
[1:39:47] Speaker 2: gonna extradite me and my son for this is a
[1:39:49] Speaker 2: nitnoid thing they did. And that's because Trump and Pompeo
[1:39:53] Speaker 2: allowed it.
[1:39:55] Speaker 1: And you were again locked up in prison here, locked
[1:39:59] Speaker 1: up in jail here awaiting extradition. Well, that whole point
[1:40:02] Speaker 1: through the American court system.
[1:40:04] Speaker 2: Because here, under the extradition treaty, they have to detain you.
[1:40:10] Speaker 2: They must detain you unless there's really special circumstances, So
[1:40:14] Speaker 2: you're forced to be detained because of the extradition treaty.
[1:40:18] Speaker 2: And Japan only has extradition treaty with two countries. Wonder
[1:40:21] Speaker 2: why the South Korea in the United States. South Korea
[1:40:24] Speaker 2: and the United States. Nobody else wants to do an
[1:40:26] Speaker 2: extradition treaty with them because they violated human rights constantly.
[1:40:30] Speaker 2: Every day they're violating human rights by torturing people's But.
[1:40:34] Speaker 3: I mean, that's one of the arguments about Guantanamo Obay.
[1:40:38] Speaker 3: One of the reasons why we can't send people from
[1:40:40] Speaker 3: Guantanamo Obay back to their countries is because their countries
[1:40:44] Speaker 3: violate human rights, so we keep them in Guantanamo Bay
[1:40:47] Speaker 3: so that they don't get their rights violated. But the
[1:40:50] Speaker 3: US will send a US citizen to a country that's
[1:40:54] Speaker 3: known for violating human rights.
[1:40:56] Speaker 2: That's right. And it's even on a State department's website
[1:40:59] Speaker 2: that they don't have no heat, they put you in
[1:41:02] Speaker 2: solitary confinement, and these are violations against the Convention against
[1:41:08] Speaker 2: Torture and Violation. I had to.
[1:41:11] Speaker 1: Research this stuff when all this was going on, and
[1:41:14] Speaker 1: you were facing extradition, and we were talking while you
[1:41:16] Speaker 1: were in jail, and I mean, this isn't just I
[1:41:19] Speaker 1: should point out it's not just Mike Taylor's opinion. Like
[1:41:21] Speaker 1: Human Rights Watch and others have done reports on this
[1:41:24] Speaker 1: and other foreign nationals who have been charged and put
[1:41:26] Speaker 1: in Japanese prisons and subjected to what can only be
[1:41:30] Speaker 1: described as draconian treatment, things that are not in line
[1:41:34] Speaker 1: with anything as Americans we would consider a justice system.
[1:41:38] Speaker 1: You mentioned the conviction rate, the way they charge people
[1:41:41] Speaker 1: over and over again. There's this presumption, a presumption of
[1:41:46] Speaker 1: guilt in their system, right that if they charge you
[1:41:49] Speaker 1: with a crime, that you must be guilty and you
[1:41:51] Speaker 1: need to like pay penance for that, and you need
[1:41:54] Speaker 1: you need to plead to that because it's sort of
[1:41:57] Speaker 1: again sort of a face saving culture.
[1:42:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, and everything's punitive, right, there's no rehabilitation whatsoever.
[1:42:04] Speaker 1: It's all punity and they will drag you out into
[1:42:07] Speaker 1: interrogation at all hours of the night until you plead
[1:42:11] Speaker 1: to something.
[1:42:11] Speaker 2: Well they did that does We had a fifteen hour
[1:42:13] Speaker 2: plane ride from Boston to Tokyo and then we spend
[1:42:17] Speaker 2: another four hours three to four hours in the airport
[1:42:20] Speaker 2: being interrogated, lame interrogation, and then we go check into
[1:42:25] Speaker 2: the Tokyo Detention House. Prosecutors are waiting there to interrogate us. Again.
[1:42:30] Speaker 2: This is all on one day. Oh and mind you,
[1:42:32] Speaker 2: you get no attorney client privilege either, your attorneys are
[1:42:35] Speaker 2: not allowed to be with you. And anytime you want
[1:42:38] Speaker 2: to communicate with your attorneys, there's a garden there sitting
[1:42:43] Speaker 2: next to me with an interpreter listening to everything or
[1:42:46] Speaker 2: writing everything down.
[1:42:47] Speaker 3: Do you know why Trump and Pompeo decide, because is
[1:42:51] Speaker 3: it essentially the president the president's decision, like whose decision is.
[1:42:56] Speaker 2: On the extradition? How it works is Japan can file
[1:43:00] Speaker 2: a request for an extradition. The State Department can flatly
[1:43:03] Speaker 2: say no without any reason whatsoever, or they can say, well,
[1:43:07] Speaker 2: let's see if they're legally allowed to be extradited, so
[1:43:12] Speaker 2: they send it to the Department of Justice. Department of
[1:43:15] Speaker 2: Justice comes arrest you, puts you through court, and decides
[1:43:19] Speaker 2: if you're allowed to be by law according to the extradition,
[1:43:22] Speaker 2: if you're allowed to be extradited. Now some of the
[1:43:24] Speaker 2: points we are you look, I had some great lawyers
[1:43:26] Speaker 2: at Dan Marino, Tillman, Finley, Abbi Lowell. Abby Lowell represented
[1:43:31] Speaker 2: Bill Clinton when he is being impeached. Abby Lowell, you know,
[1:43:34] Speaker 2: represents Hunter Biden now I think, but he also represented
[1:43:37] Speaker 2: the time Jared Kushner. So Abby Lowell's, you know, one
[1:43:42] Speaker 2: of the great lawyers in the world. With Dan Marino on.
[1:43:45] Speaker 2: These other guys, they're brilliant and they're hard workers. We
[1:43:48] Speaker 2: also had Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb was the White House
[1:43:51] Speaker 2: General Counsel under Trump that left, you know, advising us
[1:43:54] Speaker 2: in helping. Ty Cobb never even charged the penny for
[1:43:57] Speaker 2: his time. By the way, these guys are good guys,
[1:44:00] Speaker 2: good Americans. They don't need this case. It's a peanut case,
[1:44:03] Speaker 2: but they jumped into help. Impressive. And then another great lawyer,
[1:44:08] Speaker 2: Paul Kelly in Boston, you know, a former AUSA. He's
[1:44:12] Speaker 2: the one that prosecuted that undercover case. I did. So
[1:44:14] Speaker 2: when I think about prosecutors, I think the guys like
[1:44:17] Speaker 2: him who are honest and ethical and they don't bullshit
[1:44:20] Speaker 2: and they don't lie, and they're fair, they're fair. They
[1:44:23] Speaker 2: get a lot of power. The power of the federal
[1:44:25] Speaker 2: prosecutors have is awesome, and you want guys like him
[1:44:29] Speaker 2: using it because they don't abuse it. So anyways, these
[1:44:33] Speaker 2: guys all jumped in and they're all saying, no, there's
[1:44:35] Speaker 2: no way you're going to be extra it's not going
[1:44:36] Speaker 2: to happen. It's a pitoalty case. It's foolish, but you know,
[1:44:40] Speaker 2: but the State Department, you know, finally gave the judge
[1:44:44] Speaker 2: asked for a sworn affidavid saying they're not going to
[1:44:46] Speaker 2: be tortured. And the State Department Deputy Secretary of State
[1:44:51] Speaker 2: wrote to sworn affidavit and gave it to the judge
[1:44:55] Speaker 2: that we're not going to be tortured, which is a
[1:44:58] Speaker 2: ball face lie because on the State Department's website they
[1:45:02] Speaker 2: talk about there's no heat in there in the winter,
[1:45:04] Speaker 2: there's no air conditioning or ventilation. During the summer. You're
[1:45:07] Speaker 2: subjected to, you know, months of solitary confinement. Now, solitary
[1:45:14] Speaker 2: confinement over in Japan is not like the United States.
[1:45:17] Speaker 2: The United States, you get one hour out of day.
[1:45:20] Speaker 2: Japan you get no hours out of day, you get
[1:45:22] Speaker 2: no time out. I went six and a half months
[1:45:24] Speaker 2: and only two showers, only allowed to have two showers.
[1:45:29] Speaker 2: I spent seventeen out of twenty months in Japan and
[1:45:31] Speaker 2: solitary confinement and you sleep on the floor, everything's on
[1:45:35] Speaker 2: the floor, lights on twenty four to seven, and you
[1:45:38] Speaker 2: got a CCTV camera in there. So that's solitary confinement there.
[1:45:42] Speaker 2: You only know what time it is, and there's mold
[1:45:44] Speaker 2: all over the place, mold all over. You only know
[1:45:48] Speaker 2: what time it is by based on the meals that
[1:45:49] Speaker 2: you get. You know, during the day, you get about
[1:45:52] Speaker 2: twelve hundred calories a day of meals of rice and tofu.
[1:45:56] Speaker 2: So make sure there's no rice in tofu around me here.
[1:46:00] Speaker 3: So how did the d o J like, if the
[1:46:04] Speaker 3: State Department referred to the d OJ, how did the
[1:46:07] Speaker 3: DJ like look at the case and say, well, he'd
[1:46:11] Speaker 3: actually didn't break law in Japan, so what are we
[1:46:13] Speaker 3: sending for it?
[1:46:14] Speaker 2: How did they don't say that? They say that's for
[1:46:16] Speaker 2: the Japanese to decide if you violated a law there.
[1:46:20] Speaker 2: DJ went after his hard prosecuted from Boston, went after
[1:46:24] Speaker 2: as hard. It was like the case of his lifetime.
[1:46:28] Speaker 2: You know, you're trading Americans out, you get caught into
[1:46:31] Speaker 2: political stuff. Yeah, yeah, you're doing your job. Bullshit, have
[1:46:34] Speaker 2: some balls, stand up and do your job. Really, that
[1:46:38] Speaker 2: doesn't exist very much in America nowadays. So yeah, they say, essentially,
[1:46:44] Speaker 2: you know, we don't have a ruling on the law.
[1:46:48] Speaker 2: And even the judge says, you know, I can't tell
[1:46:50] Speaker 2: the Japanese how, I can't interpret their laws for them.
[1:46:55] Speaker 2: They have to decide that. So they leave it up
[1:46:59] Speaker 2: to the Japanese.
[1:47:00] Speaker 1: I remember the judge saying herself that, like you would
[1:47:02] Speaker 1: be put under deplorable conditions that we do not really
[1:47:05] Speaker 1: consider to be in line with American justice.
[1:47:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, when they still send us they did, Yeah, yeah,
[1:47:11] Speaker 2: but who in America gets that treatment? It's clearly a violation.
[1:47:15] Speaker 2: The United Nations said, is a violation, it's a violation
[1:47:18] Speaker 2: of human rights. Oh, there's a million violations there. It
[1:47:22] Speaker 2: was a Turkish lawyer, Catulos, that is representing us within
[1:47:27] Speaker 2: the United Nations. But come on, you get six and
[1:47:31] Speaker 2: a half months, You get two showers, two showers and
[1:47:33] Speaker 2: six and a half months. Who does that? Refugees? You
[1:47:38] Speaker 2: get better treatment than that? Send me to guantanamo. I'd
[1:47:40] Speaker 2: rather go to guantanamo. Those guys get showers daily, they
[1:47:43] Speaker 2: get pizza when their lawyers show up, they get soccer,
[1:47:45] Speaker 2: they get recreation. I was out eight times in a
[1:47:48] Speaker 2: year to see the sunlight, and those most of those
[1:47:52] Speaker 2: times you like in dog kennels. They put you in
[1:47:55] Speaker 2: a dog kennel and that's where you walk on a
[1:47:57] Speaker 2: dirt floor. That's your outside time. So when I got back,
[1:48:02] Speaker 2: my vitamin D deficiency was so bad I had to
[1:48:04] Speaker 2: have a prescription for and be twelve injections. The food
[1:48:08] Speaker 2: over there is horrible. Nobody speaks, you know, English, It's
[1:48:12] Speaker 2: very rare. You got to have an interpreter to speak English.
[1:48:15] Speaker 2: My father, my attorneys told me in September of last
[1:48:19] Speaker 2: year of twenty twenty twenty two. In September, my Japanese
[1:48:24] Speaker 2: lawyers came and said, your father's dying of cancer. My
[1:48:28] Speaker 2: father's a career soldier also, and they said maybe days weeks.
[1:48:34] Speaker 2: I put a request to call my dad. He said, no, absolutely,
[1:48:37] Speaker 2: not not allowed. It's not you know, you're not allowed.
[1:48:42] Speaker 2: We don't allow that. I said, okay. And the day
[1:48:46] Speaker 2: that my lawyers told me your dad's dying, I got
[1:48:49] Speaker 2: called into the Deputy Warden's office for an investigative questioning.
[1:48:54] Speaker 2: He says, you had a visit from your lawyers today.
[1:48:58] Speaker 2: I said, yeah, yeah, I did. You don't know that?
[1:49:00] Speaker 2: Would they sneak in here anyways. He says, yeah, but
[1:49:05] Speaker 2: you raised your voice, and that's a violation of our rules.
[1:49:09] Speaker 2: I said, I didn't raise my voice. I said. There's
[1:49:11] Speaker 2: five people in that room, two lawyers on the other
[1:49:14] Speaker 2: side of the glass. I'm sitting here, your guard's sitting here,
[1:49:18] Speaker 2: the interpreter sitting there. Four of the five people will
[1:49:22] Speaker 2: tell you I didn't raise my voice. This all through interpreter.
[1:49:26] Speaker 2: He says, well, who are the four of the five people.
[1:49:29] Speaker 2: I said, my two lawyers and me, we'll tell you
[1:49:32] Speaker 2: I didn't raise my voice, and your guard will tell
[1:49:34] Speaker 2: you I didn't raise my voice. He said, why you
[1:49:37] Speaker 2: say the guard, I said, because he sound asleep. If
[1:49:40] Speaker 2: I raised my voice, he would have woke up. If
[1:49:42] Speaker 2: you doubt my word, pull the videotape. The only person
[1:49:46] Speaker 2: doing this is trying to get a promotion as your interpreter.
[1:49:50] Speaker 2: I thought he was calling me into his office. The
[1:49:52] Speaker 2: deputy warned, maybe you need a grief counseling, or we're
[1:49:55] Speaker 2: gonna let you call home or your father before he dies.
[1:49:58] Speaker 2: But oh no, no, they want to to try to
[1:50:00] Speaker 2: get me in trouble. So that's the Japanese prisons, and
[1:50:05] Speaker 2: they suck the people that run them, suck the politicians,
[1:50:09] Speaker 2: suck the horrible Who would human go six and a
[1:50:13] Speaker 2: half months with two showers?
[1:50:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, and you at first such it's sort of a
[1:50:16] Speaker 3: what would consider a shame based culture. They should really
[1:50:18] Speaker 3: be ashamed of their politicians and how they conduct their law.
[1:50:23] Speaker 1: There's a there's another there's another story along these lines
[1:50:27] Speaker 1: that I'm working on now about an American soldier. This
[1:50:30] Speaker 1: guy is an active duty soldier who I think you're
[1:50:33] Speaker 1: familiar with the case, had hypoxia at altitude driving around
[1:50:37] Speaker 1: in the mouth Fuji and and tragically, accidentally, you know,
[1:50:42] Speaker 1: killed two people. And yeah, another guy who got railroaded.
[1:50:46] Speaker 1: And there's a lot of different stuff that I won't
[1:50:48] Speaker 1: get into here, but I mean another guy who got
[1:50:50] Speaker 1: railroaded by the system over there. I mean it's terrible.
[1:50:54] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And you know what, they spend a lot
[1:50:56] Speaker 2: of money. They spend one hundred and forty million dollars
[1:50:59] Speaker 2: a year ballpark inside the Beltway on lobbyists. So Japanese
[1:51:03] Speaker 2: get what they want in America. They own a lot
[1:51:05] Speaker 2: of politicians.
[1:51:06] Speaker 1: What's I'd like to ask, you know, what's Mike Taylor's
[1:51:09] Speaker 1: take on all of this? I mean, I know you're
[1:51:11] Speaker 1: personally invested, obviously, but why was the prosecutor in the
[1:51:17] Speaker 1: United States so cock hard to extradite you? And then
[1:51:20] Speaker 1: why were the Japanese also It begs the question too,
[1:51:23] Speaker 1: why are they so adamant about extraditing you? And is
[1:51:26] Speaker 1: it just because they've been shamed publicly?
[1:51:28] Speaker 2: Is that? What?
[1:51:28] Speaker 1: This is?
[1:51:29] Speaker 2: Everything that I've heard and learned and talked to. And
[1:51:32] Speaker 2: I've talked to guys, the Japanese prisoners, some of them,
[1:51:35] Speaker 2: and they all say the same thing. They say, you're
[1:51:37] Speaker 2: a hero. You know in China, I meant Chinese people.
[1:51:41] Speaker 2: They say you're a hero because the Chinese don't like
[1:51:43] Speaker 2: the Japanese. And they said, you know, you embarrassed the
[1:51:47] Speaker 2: Japanese government and we're proud of that. We're so happy
[1:51:50] Speaker 2: for you. You know, guys are saying, I wish I
[1:51:53] Speaker 2: had a camera, I could take a picture with you.
[1:51:55] Speaker 2: I said, guys, please, just you know, back off you
[1:51:57] Speaker 2: a little bit, you know, too close for that stuff.
[1:52:00] Speaker 1: Some of yakuza guy who's missing fingers and they do.
[1:52:03] Speaker 1: But the accusing guys were all nice guys.
[1:52:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, you embarrass the Japanese government.
[1:52:08] Speaker 3: And then but then the Japanese government and embarrassed themselves
[1:52:12] Speaker 3: by by making this a deal by by and then
[1:52:16] Speaker 3: our American government, you know, embarrassed itself.
[1:52:19] Speaker 2: But like, wait a minute, you get to Takata airbags
[1:52:21] Speaker 2: three Japanese. Yeah, citizens that are wanted for the murder
[1:52:25] Speaker 2: of twenty nine people. Yeah, they don't get extradited, right right.
[1:52:29] Speaker 1: It's one of these things that extradition treaties. And this
[1:52:33] Speaker 1: also exists. Interestingly, back to the child kidnapping thing, is
[1:52:37] Speaker 1: that when foreign children are kidnapped by a parent and
[1:52:40] Speaker 1: brought here to the United States, we will enforce the
[1:52:42] Speaker 1: laws and the international agreements we have and repatriate in
[1:52:45] Speaker 1: accordance with the hey good Convention. But when it happens
[1:52:48] Speaker 1: when one of our citizens, an American child, is kidnapped
[1:52:51] Speaker 1: and brought overseas, we won't put pressure on let's say,
[1:52:53] Speaker 1: the French government or whatever, because we don't want to
[1:52:55] Speaker 1: mess up international relations.
[1:52:57] Speaker 2: Especially the Japanese government. It happens a lot, Yeah, when
[1:53:00] Speaker 2: a mother or a father will take the child and
[1:53:02] Speaker 2: go back to Japan. The Japanese government protects them. They've
[1:53:06] Speaker 2: even arrested the other The father coming in was an
[1:53:08] Speaker 2: Australian came in. He wanted to visit his children. They
[1:53:11] Speaker 2: arrested him because he showed up to visit his child.
[1:53:15] Speaker 1: I you know, my position on this has always been,
[1:53:18] Speaker 1: you know, if you committed a crime, then okay, maybe
[1:53:21] Speaker 1: might have staay the price for that. So I don't
[1:53:24] Speaker 1: have a problem with that necessarily, but I do have
[1:53:27] Speaker 1: a problem with the human rights violations. I'm not okay
[1:53:29] Speaker 1: with what they did to you.
[1:53:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know it's it's still it's amazing that
[1:53:35] Speaker 2: people can't believe seventeen months of solitary confinement. I forgot
[1:53:38] Speaker 2: what my voice sounded like, you know, And you're only
[1:53:41] Speaker 2: allowed to write four letters a month. Wow, and it's
[1:53:45] Speaker 2: on small stationary. My highlight was when I got to
[1:53:48] Speaker 2: write my son after six months of solitary confinement. They
[1:53:52] Speaker 2: allow you five letters, and I was allowed to write
[1:53:55] Speaker 2: my son, who was in a different prison so we
[1:53:58] Speaker 2: could communicate. That was like Smith's Morning for me whenever
[1:54:01] Speaker 2: I got a letter from him.
[1:54:03] Speaker 3: Did you ever, I mean, Jack asked this and I
[1:54:06] Speaker 3: kind of derailed the bit. Did you find out why
[1:54:09] Speaker 3: the prosecuted, why the Department of Justice had such a
[1:54:11] Speaker 3: heart on for you?
[1:54:12] Speaker 2: No? I think it was a young prosecutor and just
[1:54:14] Speaker 2: making a name for himself.
[1:54:16] Speaker 3: Well, he's a ship bag whoever he is, so that's
[1:54:18] Speaker 3: his name.
[1:54:19] Speaker 2: Figure it out. And he's a ship bag. So he's
[1:54:23] Speaker 2: a West Point graduate too, by the way.
[1:54:26] Speaker 3: Shit bag. He should be shunned on a personal level.
[1:54:29] Speaker 1: I mean all that time.
[1:54:30] Speaker 2: Pump Pales excuse me, pump Pale is the West Point
[1:54:33] Speaker 2: grad too.
[1:54:34] Speaker 3: They I'm highly disappointed. Like it's disgusting, Yeah it is.
[1:54:40] Speaker 1: What was it like for you on a personal level
[1:54:42] Speaker 1: going through that experience almost like two years in Japanese prison,
[1:54:45] Speaker 1: right or close twenty months? Twenty months? Yeah, what did
[1:54:50] Speaker 1: you do with yourself? What's going through your head as
[1:54:52] Speaker 1: you're having to have this experience?
[1:54:54] Speaker 2: Well, look, some of it, you know, is really uh.
[1:54:57] Speaker 2: You know, if you're going to commit a crime, you
[1:55:00] Speaker 2: got to be prepared to do the time, okay. But
[1:55:02] Speaker 2: when all these legal scholars say it's not a crime
[1:55:05] Speaker 2: and you go ahead and do it, and you know,
[1:55:07] Speaker 2: bail jumpin is not a crime, okay, then you got
[1:55:10] Speaker 2: a problem with the you know, processing that you got
[1:55:14] Speaker 2: to you gotta I got an issue. You got an
[1:55:17] Speaker 2: issue with processing that you've been betrayed by your Secretary
[1:55:20] Speaker 2: of State and your president because they traded you off
[1:55:26] Speaker 2: and then you got a problem because they got a
[1:55:28] Speaker 2: ninety nine point four percent conviction rate. If I want
[1:55:31] Speaker 2: to go to trial in Japan, it's going to take
[1:55:33] Speaker 2: me three to three and a half years. So do
[1:55:35] Speaker 2: I want to sit in solitary confinement or jail to
[1:55:38] Speaker 2: enforce labor for three to three and a half years
[1:55:40] Speaker 2: just to be able to have a trial, and then
[1:55:44] Speaker 2: where's the fairness? And then do your two years anyways,
[1:55:46] Speaker 2: and then do your Yeah, so now mind you. My
[1:55:50] Speaker 2: sentence was twenty four months. My son sentence was twenty months.
[1:55:55] Speaker 2: We both did thirty months. Because the Japanese judge says,
[1:55:59] Speaker 2: we don't care that you were in the prosecutors. Prosecutors
[1:56:03] Speaker 2: over there make the rules in the Japanese judge followed,
[1:56:06] Speaker 2: supposed to get Yeah, you're supposed to get credit for time, sir, No,
[1:56:10] Speaker 2: because the Japanese judge says, no, we don't care about
[1:56:12] Speaker 2: the time you were in America and fighting an extradition.
[1:56:15] Speaker 2: Prosecutor said, no, well we requested an extradition. You should
[1:56:18] Speaker 2: have come immediately. Oh oh, what do you think I'm
[1:56:23] Speaker 2: your bitch or something? No, you guys got it wrong.
[1:56:25] Speaker 3: It's not how it works.
[1:56:26] Speaker 2: No, it's not how your extradition works, you know. But
[1:56:30] Speaker 2: that's again the power of a prosecutor. How is this?
[1:56:33] Speaker 1: I mean, I understand that you only would know this
[1:56:35] Speaker 1: in retrospect after the fact, but I mean, how did
[1:56:37] Speaker 1: the Japanese press cover all of this?
[1:56:41] Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't seen much Japanese press, so
[1:56:46] Speaker 2: I really couldn't say. You know, we didn't get good
[1:56:52] Speaker 2: newspapers over there. They only have one newspaper that we're
[1:56:55] Speaker 2: allowed to get in English. And it was always about
[1:56:58] Speaker 2: how great Japan is, how many gold medals they won
[1:57:01] Speaker 2: during the Olympics. And we're sitting there soaking sweat breathing
[1:57:05] Speaker 2: in COVID, you know, about how great the Japanese leaders are,
[1:57:10] Speaker 2: and how great Shinzo abby is.
[1:57:13] Speaker 1: And that I forget. That was all about the newspaper.
[1:57:16] Speaker 1: That's what it was in the newspaper. The plague happened
[1:57:18] Speaker 1: while you were in prison. I forgot all that.
[1:57:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, we had COVID also, and then Shinzo Abbi got
[1:57:22] Speaker 2: shot by a Japanese kid. Yeah, great security.
[1:57:26] Speaker 3: Was there any effort at any point during the Trump
[1:57:31] Speaker 3: or Buying administrations to get you back.
[1:57:33] Speaker 2: No, we had a bunch of guys from the military,
[1:57:37] Speaker 2: especially the SF community reaching out the people, and the
[1:57:39] Speaker 2: Special Force of Caucus and the carl Uriel Roco Procopio,
[1:57:44] Speaker 2: a bunch of great guys, you know, teammates of mine, pushing.
[1:57:47] Speaker 2: But you know they go to some some uh politicians
[1:57:51] Speaker 2: like Mike Walsh in Florida. He didn't do anything for us,
[1:57:55] Speaker 2: you know, And another Congressman would say, well, you know,
[1:57:58] Speaker 2: he's not not my reistiction. I can't help him, he's
[1:58:01] Speaker 2: not a constituent. It's amazing though, when we're fighting a war,
[1:58:06] Speaker 2: we're fighting for the whole country, not one district, not
[1:58:09] Speaker 2: one congressman. So next time, when next time we got
[1:58:13] Speaker 2: to war, we got to make sure we clarify that
[1:58:15] Speaker 2: a ship's name. We can't fight for you, We can
[1:58:18] Speaker 2: only fight for the district we lived in.
[1:58:22] Speaker 3: What about what was ghost and ever? I mean, did
[1:58:27] Speaker 3: Brazil or France or uh like Lebanan try to try
[1:58:32] Speaker 3: to intercede in your behalf?
[1:58:34] Speaker 2: No? No, In fact, the French have actually brought chargers
[1:58:38] Speaker 2: against Carlos Ghosan for something I don't know, you know,
[1:58:43] Speaker 2: white collar stuff.
[1:58:44] Speaker 3: So don't embarrass the Japanese, is what you're saying.
[1:58:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, the Japanese yield a lot of influence because
[1:58:50] Speaker 2: they have a lot of power. It's the second largest
[1:58:52] Speaker 2: economy on Earth. You know, they're there. The next in
[1:58:55] Speaker 2: line is China, first the US, Japan, then China, so
[1:58:58] Speaker 2: they can a lot of money.
[1:59:00] Speaker 1: You have a pretty strong military and intelligence relationship with
[1:59:02] Speaker 1: Japan as well, which sure plays in absolutely.
[1:59:06] Speaker 2: And I heard they were in the process of buying
[1:59:08] Speaker 2: some just radar land based Then people that were gonna
[1:59:13] Speaker 2: be near it in southern Japan didn't want it, so
[1:59:16] Speaker 2: the Japanese backed out of that deal. And then Pompeo
[1:59:19] Speaker 2: went over in October twenty twenty and got them the buy,
[1:59:22] Speaker 2: you know, at a several billion dollar more, put it
[1:59:25] Speaker 2: on two ships, so now they have two as destroyers.
[1:59:30] Speaker 1: Good work if you can get it.
[1:59:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, but how convenient It was just after that that,
[1:59:36] Speaker 2: you know, we were told we're being extradited. Yeah, so
[1:59:39] Speaker 2: you know, I'm curious if we were part of that deal.
[1:59:41] Speaker 2: So almost twenty months in prison, you guys get out
[1:59:47] Speaker 2: seventeen of the twenty in solitary confinement.
[1:59:50] Speaker 1: And you finally get released come back home. How do
[1:59:54] Speaker 1: you how do you start putting things back together after that?
[1:59:58] Speaker 2: Just gotta do it. It's like being on a forty
[2:00:01] Speaker 2: mile rock. You just got to keep putting one foot
[2:00:03] Speaker 2: in front of the other. You got blisters and your
[2:00:05] Speaker 2: your feet are hurting, and your back is sore, and
[2:00:07] Speaker 2: just got to keep doing.
[2:00:08] Speaker 1: I remember I talked to Peter, I think first, when
[2:00:11] Speaker 1: you guys got back, and I remember him saying, like,
[2:00:12] Speaker 1: you lost a lot of weight and we're trying to
[2:00:14] Speaker 1: get back into shape.
[2:00:15] Speaker 2: Yeah. I dropped about fifty two pounds there, but you're
[2:00:18] Speaker 2: only getting a thousand or twelve hundred calories a day, right, Yeah,
[2:00:21] Speaker 2: you know, seventy five percent rice twenty five percent tofu.
[2:00:23] Speaker 1: Body by Japanese prison man. When did you get back
[2:00:27] Speaker 1: to the United States?
[2:00:29] Speaker 2: I got back October twenty eighth. October twenty eighth, My
[2:00:36] Speaker 2: father died October eighth. I got released from prison, and
[2:00:40] Speaker 2: they already knew I was going to be released, because
[2:00:41] Speaker 2: the federal magistrate came over and did the hearing, the
[2:00:44] Speaker 2: transfer hearing, so the Japanese knew I was going to
[2:00:47] Speaker 2: be released. A Japanese Ministry of Justice approved the transfer
[2:00:52] Speaker 2: to the US. So bearing in mind all that they
[2:00:54] Speaker 2: still wuldn't let me call my father.
[2:00:56] Speaker 1: Was on his deathbed.
[2:00:57] Speaker 3: What shit bags, I mean, honest, honestly, like.
[2:01:00] Speaker 1: And then you had to spend like was there like
[2:01:02] Speaker 1: a month in American prison on the way back back.
[2:01:04] Speaker 2: Three weeks they slides into la and the people that
[2:01:07] Speaker 2: flew us in from the Bureau of Prisons, the transporter,
[2:01:11] Speaker 2: they were professional, they were phenomenal, very good. They said, look,
[2:01:14] Speaker 2: you guys don't need to wear change. We're not chaining
[2:01:16] Speaker 2: you up. We went with the Japanese. We had chains,
[2:01:19] Speaker 2: they take your shoes. We had a dog leash on us.
[2:01:22] Speaker 2: We had like six guys on you right, six they
[2:01:24] Speaker 2: had seventeen, seventeen. We were in the seven eighty seven
[2:01:28] Speaker 2: and seventeen. A couple of prosecutors interpreters. Oh yeah, I
[2:01:33] Speaker 2: wasn't allowed to go to the shower without six guards.
[2:01:37] Speaker 2: And you got a fifteen minute shower. You come out
[2:01:39] Speaker 2: of your room, you go to the showering bag.
[2:01:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, like they're they're treating you as though you were
[2:01:45] Speaker 3: an international terraceable. Later the bomb their subways.
[2:01:49] Speaker 2: That's why I said, look, you know I was asking
[2:01:51] Speaker 2: the consolest could you send us a Gitmo? Yeah, send
[2:01:54] Speaker 2: us a Gitmo. Yeah, at least they got decent weather there. Yeah.
[2:01:57] Speaker 2: Here were freeze your frost bite in the mornings on
[2:02:01] Speaker 2: our feet, in our hands. Every day you get frost bite. Yeah.
[2:02:04] Speaker 2: No heat, none, zippo. And you're not allowed to use
[2:02:08] Speaker 2: the blanket to stay warm. Yeah. And in the summer
[2:02:10] Speaker 2: you're soaking wet, there's no no ac, no ventilation, and
[2:02:15] Speaker 2: you're screening. You can't tell if it's daylight or dusk
[2:02:18] Speaker 2: because there's so much mold on it.
[2:02:22] Speaker 3: I'm just I'm so frustrated with obviously Japan and Japan
[2:02:26] Speaker 3: like they can fuck off and do whatever they want,
[2:02:28] Speaker 3: you know whatever. I'm so frustrated with the United States
[2:02:31] Speaker 3: in this scenario when we make this big you know,
[2:02:36] Speaker 3: to do about human rights around the world and human
[2:02:40] Speaker 3: rights in this country, when really, when it comes down
[2:02:43] Speaker 3: to political expedience, it it doesn't matter.
[2:02:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we beat our chests like we're the
[2:02:50] Speaker 2: beacon of human rights bullshit. Yeah, you know, I laugh
[2:02:54] Speaker 2: when I hear blinking.
[2:02:55] Speaker 3: And somewhere out there is a graduate who's a prosecutor
[2:02:59] Speaker 3: who didn't care about human rights. Good job on you.
[2:03:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and Pompeo too. Yeah, at the end of
[2:03:04] Speaker 2: the day, Pompeo could shut that down anytime. Yeah, didn't
[2:03:07] Speaker 2: do it, So I I you know, guys, stop being
[2:03:10] Speaker 2: hypocrites about human rights. You're full of shit. Yeah.
[2:03:14] Speaker 1: So what has what has post prison life been like
[2:03:17] Speaker 1: for you? I mean getting back to the United States,
[2:03:19] Speaker 1: putting your life back together?
[2:03:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I said, one step at a time, you
[2:03:23] Speaker 2: drop that heavy ruck and you just got to keep pushing,
[2:03:26] Speaker 2: you know. And I'm putting a lot of my time
[2:03:27] Speaker 2: and effort into vite them in one and want to
[2:03:30] Speaker 2: increase the sales.
[2:03:31] Speaker 1: No more rescue missions overseas.
[2:03:34] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but let me ask you something. Sure, if
[2:03:38] Speaker 2: if you had the experience I had and somebody came
[2:03:40] Speaker 2: to you said my child has been taken or something
[2:03:43] Speaker 2: like that, you're going to turn them down.
[2:03:45] Speaker 1: If it's a kid, I'd have a hard time just
[2:03:47] Speaker 1: say exactly exactly.
[2:03:49] Speaker 3: But then again, I mean knowing what slimy bastards a
[2:03:53] Speaker 3: lot of people in the United States, like Department of
[2:03:56] Speaker 3: Justice and government are like, it's sort of like it's
[2:04:02] Speaker 3: a gamble, right, It's it's a crap shoot.
[2:04:04] Speaker 2: Well, you're gonna make sure that there's custody here, right,
[2:04:07] Speaker 2: to make sure that the there's a warrant for the
[2:04:10] Speaker 2: person's arrest, the unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
[2:04:13] Speaker 3: That you don't pay the guards to look the other
[2:04:15] Speaker 3: way when you do it, that could be very detrimental.
[2:04:17] Speaker 2: Also yeah, yeah, you know how and out in federal course.
[2:04:21] Speaker 3: So vitamin one. Honestly, everybody check it out if if
[2:04:25] Speaker 3: you I mean, it's great, it tastes great like we've
[2:04:29] Speaker 3: been drinking it. It's delicious.
[2:04:30] Speaker 1: Our mini fridge is stocked up.
[2:04:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks to d What are you saying there's a
[2:04:35] Speaker 3: link in the description. And then what else are you
[2:04:38] Speaker 3: working on? Obviously a movie, I mean this your.
[2:04:41] Speaker 2: Life is Yeah, MGM's going to produce a movie. Yeah,
[2:04:45] Speaker 2: a premiere movie. Yeah, Sam Rockwell's in it. Javi R. Bartum,
[2:04:50] Speaker 2: Sam's gonna play me. Javi R. Bardam is gonna play Carlos.
[2:04:55] Speaker 2: And they're working on that, and that's in the going.
[2:04:59] Speaker 2: And they're talking about a TV series. Also on the
[2:05:02] Speaker 2: TV series, I believe it's on my life. Yeah, you
[2:05:07] Speaker 2: know different things. I've did a coach football in military
[2:05:10] Speaker 2: and and rescuing people and that kind of stuff.
[2:05:13] Speaker 3: So that's fantastic they're going to do that.
[2:05:15] Speaker 1: And then.
[2:05:18] Speaker 2: What else is there, you know, and then there's some
[2:05:21] Speaker 2: other magazines coming up. Oh, there's also a book coming out.
[2:05:26] Speaker 2: We're shopping the book.
[2:05:27] Speaker 1: So you wrote a book.
[2:05:28] Speaker 2: No, it's not written yet, but with the proposals done, gotcha,
[2:05:32] Speaker 2: but just being done the proposals actually done. It might
[2:05:35] Speaker 2: be done today actually, but and they're going to shot
[2:05:37] Speaker 2: that to some of the publishers. So we're going to
[2:05:39] Speaker 2: see how that goes.
[2:05:40] Speaker 3: Well, let us know when when that comes out, and
[2:05:42] Speaker 3: we'll happily plug it for you.
[2:05:44] Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, yeah, I'd love to have you back. And
[2:05:46] Speaker 2: m GM's doing a premiere movie too, so that'll be interesting.
[2:05:50] Speaker 3: I just want to tell you, I'm so like, I'm
[2:05:52] Speaker 3: so heated right now, I'm so mad, I'm so angry,
[2:05:55] Speaker 3: like I I I for you to like for you
[2:06:01] Speaker 3: to kind of like get your life back and to
[2:06:03] Speaker 3: move past this, like I if it had happened to me,
[2:06:06] Speaker 3: I feel like I'd just be in this dissent. So
[2:06:08] Speaker 3: I I admire you know, not you know, your whole career,
[2:06:12] Speaker 3: but your ability to move past this, because right now
[2:06:14] Speaker 3: I'm just like on fire thinking about how like I said,
[2:06:18] Speaker 3: fuck the Japanese and whatever they did, but but how
[2:06:21] Speaker 3: our own government treated you.
[2:06:24] Speaker 2: They knew both cases, they knew, they knew you were
[2:06:27] Speaker 2: going to be tortured. Yeah, and they turned a blind eye.
[2:06:30] Speaker 2: And that's okay. You know you're gonna have somebody torture,
[2:06:32] Speaker 2: you're gonna send them. Stop being a hypocrite, though, Stop
[2:06:35] Speaker 2: talking about human rights. I don't want any bullshit about
[2:06:38] Speaker 2: you know, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salomon because shogi, knock
[2:06:41] Speaker 2: it off. It's one guy, right, knock it off. Come on,
[2:06:44] Speaker 2: we stop talking about the Russia.
[2:06:46] Speaker 1: Really give a shit about that? Either?
[2:06:47] Speaker 2: Well that's true, but still why are we talking about that? Yeah?
[2:06:51] Speaker 2: You know you got a drone strike that goes bad?
[2:06:55] Speaker 2: How many innocent people die? Right? You know? You sending
[2:06:59] Speaker 2: literally And the fact of the matter is it was
[2:07:01] Speaker 2: under the Biden administration. Trump made the deal and to
[2:07:03] Speaker 2: prove that with Pompeo to send us. But the judge,
[2:07:07] Speaker 2: the judge waited before making the final decision until the
[2:07:10] Speaker 2: Biden administration took office. Right once he was sworn in.
[2:07:14] Speaker 2: Then we started probing the judge a little bit, getting
[2:07:17] Speaker 2: her to make a decision because we knew Biden wasn't
[2:07:20] Speaker 2: gonna do anything. Biden had the chance to shut this down.
[2:07:22] Speaker 2: He didn't either, Biden and blinking, so again, chill out, guys, bullshit.
[2:07:27] Speaker 2: So both administrations are really just like full of ship again.
[2:07:31] Speaker 2: Did Japanese pay for American politicians? Yeah?
[2:07:34] Speaker 4: Yeah, Do we have any questions for for Mike? I'm
[2:07:38] Speaker 4: not let me look it up. Do you do we
[2:07:41] Speaker 4: have anything on Patreon? Okay, let me get there.
[2:07:50] Speaker 3: Uhre so vitamin won make sure you get some hydrate guys.
[2:07:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's clean. It's clean hydration. Even diabetus can drink
[2:07:59] Speaker 2: it because there's no sugar in it.
[2:08:05] Speaker 3: Let's see. Jac Thank you very much for the donation,
[2:08:10] Speaker 3: and we I guess we have stickers now because people
[2:08:13] Speaker 3: are like giving us stickers instead of comments.
[2:08:16] Speaker 2: Rs.
[2:08:16] Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Thank you for having Mike on
[2:08:18] Speaker 3: Good Disease doing well? Yes, Eric, thank you for both
[2:08:22] Speaker 3: the donations. Keep it up, guys enjoying the content. Cat
[2:08:26] Speaker 3: Chaser Brock thanks for the stickers. Ian thanks fantastic episode
[2:08:33] Speaker 3: Ninja as Hell escape story for sure, uh and cat
[2:08:39] Speaker 3: Chaser thanks again for the sticker. Say that again, what.
[2:08:46] Speaker 1: Is he up to?
[2:08:47] Speaker 2: I have no idea.
[2:08:49] Speaker 1: I don't either.
[2:08:50] Speaker 2: Hanging out and love it on? Yeah?
[2:08:53] Speaker 3: Has he like obviously he didn't go to jail and
[2:09:00] Speaker 3: you did, did he ever, yeah, you know, expressed any
[2:09:06] Speaker 3: appreciation for for what you did or anything.
[2:09:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he did. And you know, he's he's
[2:09:14] Speaker 2: got his hands fall himself right now. Uh, you know,
[2:09:17] Speaker 2: he's he's he ain't moving anywhere in Lebanon. The French
[2:09:23] Speaker 2: have an arrests warrant for him also, and the French
[2:09:26] Speaker 2: have you know, Lebanon used to be a French colony,
[2:09:29] Speaker 2: so they have some right they do. And Lebanon is
[2:09:32] Speaker 2: in you know, dire straits right now economically and and
[2:09:35] Speaker 2: civilly and politically. They don't even have a president right now. Yeah,
[2:09:39] Speaker 2: I don't think they have a parliament.
[2:09:41] Speaker 1: Port blew up a year ago.
[2:09:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the largest non nuclear explosion since Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
[2:09:48] Speaker 2: That's that's impressive. And that was all ammonium nitrate. Yeah,
[2:09:52] Speaker 2: there's a wing nut that was storing out there. But anyways, yeah,
[2:09:55] Speaker 2: they're they're in dire straits, so you know, the French
[2:09:59] Speaker 2: have a lot of influence. But what's interesting though, he
[2:10:02] Speaker 2: welcomed the French prosecutors in and sat with him and
[2:10:05] Speaker 2: met with him, and then they went and charged them.
[2:10:08] Speaker 2: But I would think that why would you allow a
[2:10:10] Speaker 2: prosecutor to come in if you were really guilty of me? Right? Right,
[2:10:13] Speaker 2: don't make any sense? Right? He didn't have to let
[2:10:15] Speaker 2: him do that.
[2:10:18] Speaker 1: I mean, Mike did Did Carlos pay you for this?
[2:10:21] Speaker 1: Or you just volunteer and go off and do this.
[2:10:24] Speaker 2: No, I did not ask for a penny for service beforehand.
[2:10:29] Speaker 2: I didn't ask for a penny of it. So, and
[2:10:31] Speaker 2: I don't want to get into any of the talk
[2:10:33] Speaker 2: any of the funds. But no, I didn't ask for money.
[2:10:38] Speaker 2: The issue of money came up saying, well, he's got leverage,
[2:10:41] Speaker 2: and I'm insulted by that because I never asked for
[2:10:44] Speaker 2: a dollar.
[2:10:48] Speaker 3: It's I mean, you did something super cool. I mean
[2:10:57] Speaker 3: something that would be in a movie written for screen,
[2:11:03] Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
[2:11:03] Speaker 2: Like you did. Look, I got to say the operation
[2:11:07] Speaker 2: was flawless, right, absolutely flawless, right, you know, it made
[2:11:10] Speaker 2: Michion impossible like a joke.
[2:11:12] Speaker 3: Right, and and and and the fact that it was
[2:11:15] Speaker 3: so flawless. I mean, I'm that's probably why Japan acts
[2:11:18] Speaker 3: like an angry three year old, you know about the
[2:11:20] Speaker 3: whole thing is because you conducting an awesome operation.
[2:11:27] Speaker 2: You know, When I first got back, I go into
[2:11:29] Speaker 2: a Chinese restaurant. I ordered some food, went to pick
[2:11:32] Speaker 2: it up the Chinese restaurant and they knew who who
[2:11:35] Speaker 2: I was. I said, no, no, you can't pay. That's
[2:11:39] Speaker 2: great what you did to Japan. We love you. Yeah,
[2:11:42] Speaker 2: so I got free Chinese food. Yeah, that didn't too bad.
[2:11:47] Speaker 3: So so you know, you've got vitamin one and and
[2:11:50] Speaker 3: you know these other projects with moving the book and
[2:11:53] Speaker 3: things like that. What what else would you like?
[2:11:56] Speaker 2: Like?
[2:11:57] Speaker 3: What else interest you these days? And I'm sure you're busy.
[2:12:01] Speaker 2: You know. I've got some good friends over in Dubai.
[2:12:05] Speaker 2: I'm gonna start manufacturing over in Abu Dhabi. But these
[2:12:08] Speaker 2: guys are like brothers over there. And in Dubai, buddy
[2:12:12] Speaker 2: of mine, Ahmed, and I got two sons that live
[2:12:14] Speaker 2: there too, wonderful people. So we want to penetrate the
[2:12:18] Speaker 2: market there and get this build up. And you know,
[2:12:21] Speaker 2: we do a lot of skydive in It's a great
[2:12:23] Speaker 2: place to skydive. Beautiful weather, a little bit warm during
[2:12:27] Speaker 2: the summer, but still yeah, I'd rather be hot than cold. Yeah.
[2:12:31] Speaker 2: So yeah, so I'm gonna work on vitamin want and
[2:12:33] Speaker 2: get it pushed all over and do some skydive in
[2:12:35] Speaker 2: and enjoy life.
[2:12:37] Speaker 1: Well it's awesome, man. Yeah, I'm glad.
[2:12:39] Speaker 3: We deeply appreciate you.
[2:12:42] Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
[2:12:43] Speaker 1: This story had a had a happy ending, but it
[2:12:46] Speaker 1: took quite a long time.
[2:12:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. And you know, I'm not sure it's
[2:12:49] Speaker 2: over just yet, you think so, Yeah, there could be
[2:12:52] Speaker 2: more to come, like legal drama. Oh no, I don't
[2:12:56] Speaker 2: think legal drama.
[2:12:57] Speaker 3: Oh, just your story.
[2:12:58] Speaker 2: But it's definitely legal, is what The United Nations. United
[2:13:01] Speaker 2: Nations are going to come down pretty soon and say
[2:13:05] Speaker 2: this is a violation of human rights. And this is
[2:13:08] Speaker 2: so the United Nations Working Group out of Geneva. They've
[2:13:10] Speaker 2: got this in hand.
[2:13:11] Speaker 3: Can you do a civil suit for through the United
[2:13:15] Speaker 3: Nation or is it all criminal?
[2:13:16] Speaker 2: No, it would be civil, I hope so. Man. I again,
[2:13:21] Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not clear on that sure yet,
[2:13:24] Speaker 2: because look, the United Nations is going to say, yeah,
[2:13:26] Speaker 2: you tortured him and you tortured his son. And they're
[2:13:29] Speaker 2: gonna say, no, no, we didn't we do that to everybody.
[2:13:31] Speaker 2: That's what That's just what they do. Right. And the
[2:13:34] Speaker 2: United States, what do you think the Department of State's
[2:13:36] Speaker 2: going to say? Right, the White House and the Department
[2:13:38] Speaker 2: of State are the biggest media machines on Earth. They
[2:13:41] Speaker 2: can bury it in the media that the reality is,
[2:13:44] Speaker 2: you get one journalist that got some intestinal fortitude is
[2:13:47] Speaker 2: gonna say time out. You guys have this on your
[2:13:50] Speaker 2: website that says they've got no heat. Your consulors have
[2:13:53] Speaker 2: told you these people are being tortured. Your counselor has
[2:13:56] Speaker 2: written to you in cables saying there's been seventeen months
[2:13:59] Speaker 2: of solid you confinement, six and a half months and
[2:14:02] Speaker 2: only two showers, and you're allowing this.
[2:14:05] Speaker 3: Well, they'll change their website, like, they'll change the.
[2:14:07] Speaker 2: Text on the still on there. Plus we've got prints
[2:14:10] Speaker 2: of it. Yeah, can't change it enough.
[2:14:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what is the additional drama that you
[2:14:15] Speaker 1: think could come out of this that hasn't happened yet?
[2:14:16] Speaker 3: Oh?
[2:14:17] Speaker 2: I think you know the United Nations says, you know,
[2:14:19] Speaker 2: you so called beacons of human rights in Japan, right, Yeah,
[2:14:23] Speaker 2: you guys violated human rights and you knowingly did it.
[2:14:25] Speaker 3: That'll be interesting, I hope, so, I hope so for
[2:14:28] Speaker 3: for your sake and everybody else, I mean, not just Americans,
[2:14:30] Speaker 3: for Japanese people.
[2:14:31] Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, well, there's a lot of Japanese people
[2:14:33] Speaker 2: that don't like their system of justice. You know, it's
[2:14:36] Speaker 2: called hostage justice system. Yeah, they're going to hold you
[2:14:38] Speaker 2: until you plead guilty. Yeah, once you plead guilty, then
[2:14:41] Speaker 2: they'll cut you loose. But that's what they did to you.
[2:14:43] Speaker 2: Hear in America over your your case, right, same like
[2:14:46] Speaker 2: like we have here too, but we just pretend that's
[2:14:49] Speaker 2: not what's happening. But that's exactly what's happened, right, and
[2:14:51] Speaker 2: it's happening every day. Right.
[2:14:53] Speaker 3: People spend two years in jail before they ever get
[2:14:55] Speaker 3: to see it, jests.
[2:14:56] Speaker 2: And how many times do we see a black American
[2:14:58] Speaker 2: that's spent twenty years in jail for some murder or
[2:15:01] Speaker 2: rape or violent crime that we find out later he
[2:15:04] Speaker 2: didn't do right? And what about that poor human being?
[2:15:07] Speaker 1: Right?
[2:15:07] Speaker 2: What about his life? Right? And by the way, where's
[2:15:10] Speaker 2: the prosecutor who lied? Right? How come they don't go
[2:15:13] Speaker 2: do those twenty years? Yeah?
[2:15:15] Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely so, Yeah.
[2:15:18] Speaker 1: Mike, I mean this has been a like pretty wild,
[2:15:21] Speaker 1: all encompassing interview, and I would love to have you
[2:15:24] Speaker 1: back when you know, I'm sure your book is going
[2:15:26] Speaker 1: to get published sooner or later. I mean, it's an
[2:15:28] Speaker 1: incredible story. When it does, I'd love to have you back.
[2:15:30] Speaker 2: Sure, you know and it Sure. Sam's a great guy.
[2:15:37] Speaker 2: I had dinner with him.
[2:15:38] Speaker 1: Awesome. Okay, good, I'm god that's coming together. Anything else
[2:15:42] Speaker 1: that you think we failed to cover that you want
[2:15:44] Speaker 1: to get out there?
[2:15:45] Speaker 2: No, I think that's pretty much it.
[2:15:48] Speaker 3: Well, we deeply appreciate it.
[2:15:50] Speaker 2: Well we've been talking a while. Yeah.
[2:15:52] Speaker 1: Man, well, guys, I thank you everyone who joined us tonight.
[2:15:56] Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's been a fucking amazing interview
[2:15:59] Speaker 1: to say at least, I'm hot. I'm just so angry
[2:16:01] Speaker 1: right now. Uh, Tuesday, This Tuesday, we're gonna have Andrew
[2:16:05] Speaker 1: Milburn on the show. He'll be here in studio, and
[2:16:07] Speaker 1: then on Friday, also in studio, we'll have Toby Harnden
[2:16:11] Speaker 1: and Justin Sapp Uh So, I hope you guys will
[2:16:15] Speaker 1: join us for that. We look forward to seeing all
[2:16:17] Speaker 1: of you.
[2:16:18] Speaker 2: Uh.
[2:16:18] Speaker 1: Andy's always a fun time, and so is Justin and Toby.
[2:16:21] Speaker 1: Great guys, Mike again, man, thank you.
[2:16:24] Speaker 3: I'm gonna deeply appreciate you.
[2:16:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we'll do it again.
[2:16:27] Speaker 1: Absolutely so, all right, guys, we will. We'll see you
[2:16:31] Speaker 1: on Tuesday.
[2:16:31] Speaker 3: Please like Share, Join our Patreon Do all that amazing
[2:16:35] Speaker 3: banks are down the discretion and by vitamin one and

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