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The following is a conversation with Roger Reeves, one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.
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He worked for Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, the leaders behind the Medellin Cartel.
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Roger was the employer and close friend of Barry Seale, the infamous drug smuggler who was the main character in the movie American Made.
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Roger transported countless tons of cocaine and marijuana, covering six continents.
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He escaped prison five times, was shut down in both Mexico and Colombia, and was tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison.
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Through all of this, his wife Mari, the love of his life, was there with him.
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And when he was in prison, she waited for him.
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He recently got out of prison, where for many years he worked on his memoir called Smuggler.
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This podcast is an exploration of his story.
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Quick mention of our sponsors, Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Aidsleep.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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Let me say a few words about Roger Reeves, Pablo Escobar, and the war on drugs.
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This conversation with Roger is unlike any I ve ever done.
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In the eyes of many, including the law, Roger is a criminal, a bad man who has added to the suffering in the world.
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but he never directly engaged or participated in the violence, unlike his bosses, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.
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His crime was the transport of drugs.
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I thought about this, and about Pablo Escobar, who was at once both a brutal murderer and a Robin Hood figure who helped the poor and was loved by thousands, if not millions.
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We sometimes idolize murderers and destroy good, honest men.
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We give power and money to corrupt politicians and dictators that starve and murder their own people.
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Given this, I think about what makes for a good man, and what makes for a bad man, and who decides.
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Sitting across from Roger, I saw a complicated man, but one who has kindness in his heart, a love for money and adventure, and a disdain for violence.
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Again, his crime was the transport of drugs.
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Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost US $1 trillion.
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Marijuana legalization alone would save and make $13.7 billion that could send more than 650,000 students to public universities every year.
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Then there s the human stories of the 500,000 human beings sitting in prison for drug-related offenses and the 1.1 million on probation and parole.
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Their life is damaged or ruined beyond repair due to the prohibition of drugs.
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There s a lot more to be said about the damage done by the war on drugs.
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But when reading about Roger s story and talking to him, I couldn t escape the thought that while society wants to label him a criminal and a bad human being, there are much worse men out there who we give a pass to, even give power to, even men who hold political office or run companies.
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I also think about my role as an interviewer.
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sitting across a man like Roger.
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In these interviews, in life, in many ways I continue to be myself.
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A person who, like Dostoevsky s The Idiot, seeks the good in all people, but is hurt by it on occasion and maybe is destroyed by it in the end.
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I m not naive, but I m also optimistic and have hope for humanity.
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That s who I am.
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And that s what these conversations are.
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I hope you join me and I hope you understand that I come from a place of love.
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As usual, I ll do a few minutes of ads now, no ads in the middle, I find those to be annoying, I try to make them interesting, but I give you timestamps, so if you must skip, please still check out the sponsors in the description.
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I hope you don t skip, but at the very least, I hope you buy whatever stuff they re selling, we re very picky with the sponsors we take on, so I hope you ll find value in it, just as I have.
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This episode is brought to you by Noom, a new sponsor, so please do definitely check them out, and I hope they stick around.
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This includes helping you find why you wanted to do it in the first place.
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I would say about 10 minutes a day to build those better habits.
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I think diets and all those kinds of things don t really work when they re framed in the context of restricting yourself.
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I think you have to see it as habits, like everything that seems unpleasant at first
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You don t even need to sign up, but I hope you do sign up.
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This show is sponsored by Allform, which is a furniture company.
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I really love their stuff.
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Like I said, it s classy and it s comfortable.
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I don t know how long ago that was, but that s when he wore the white suit to my black suit.
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And once more, we ll get to share that love seat when we talk again soon.
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I m not exactly sure when, or maybe I do know, but I m not going to tell you, in the true trolling style that Michael is a master of.
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Anything that works with Linux brings joys to my heart.
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And it s pretty cool that I can be in Windows, I can be in Linux, I can be on my Android phone, I can be on my iPhone, and the thing just works.
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Anyway, go to expressvpn.com slash LexPod to get an extra three months free.
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That s expressvpn.com slash LexPod.
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This show is also sponsored by Four Sigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee and plant-based protein.
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I think there s a bunch of stuff in it that s super healthy.
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You can go to their website at foursigmatic.com slash flex to check out what all the healthy stuff is, but I just drink it because it tastes good.
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Like for many people, coffee is part of my morning ritual.
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It s almost zen-like.
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The depth and clarity of thought I have in those first few hours of morning are just amazing.
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And I feel like both the warmth and the caffeine of coffee is a kind of springboard for that.
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For no good reason whatsoever, I am trying to cut down on caffeine late at night, but I was always one of those people that can drink a cup of coffee right before I go to bed and just knock myself out and the sleep is great.
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This episode is also sponsored by Eight Sleep and its Pod Pro mattress.
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Every time I mention Eight Sleep, it just brings a smile to my face, because I love it, that it controls temperature using a pretty sleek app.
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I also know it s super hot outside in Boston and New York.
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They have a pod pro cover so you can just add that to your mattress without having to buy theirs, but their mattress is nice.
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That sounds like a bad 80s song.
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That s 8sleep.com slash Lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast and here is my conversation.
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with Roger Reeves.
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You are one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.
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What would you say motivated you?
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Money, power, the thrill, or was it something else?
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Money.
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But isn t there a point where you ve had more money than you can possibly know what to do with?
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Or was it always more money?
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You know, I had plenty of money several times.
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And I think it s sort of like if you was in Las Vegas and you had the slot machine handled down, and the gold coins was tumbling around you, and you had sweepers bagging them up.
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When would you let it go?
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But isn t some part of that the thrill then?
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Oh, there was a lot of thrill.
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Sometimes way too much.
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You made certainly tens of millions of dollars, probably much more.
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What memorable experience did having that much money make possible for you?
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So there s one thing is the money.
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And the other thing is what that money can buy.
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Well, I bought everything that I could hide.
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I bought seven farms.
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I owned the
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the land where the city of Merino Valley, California is.
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I had an option on that land.
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Did the planning and development of that.
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The most expensive coin in the world.
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Yachts, ships, airplanes galore.
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Did that bring you happiness?
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No, absolutely not.
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In fact, I think I m happier now.
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I know I m happier now.
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So looking back, would you do it the same way all again?
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No way.
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Really?
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Even the thrill of it?
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Not even the thrill of it.
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It wasn t worth 33 years in prison being away from my lovely family.
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So money, what about the power?
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Just being on top of the world where nobody can, not the governments, the police, all the big bad agencies chasing you.
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And you could do whatever the heck you wanted.
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As far as having to look over your shoulder everywhere you went and every phone call you made, make sure that you was naked with somebody in the ocean before you talked.
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It s rather uncomfortable.
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Yeah.
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I like to make phone calls the same way.
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What was it like meeting and working with Pablo Escobar, the leader of the Medellin cartel?
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He just seemed like a gentleman when I met him, just like you and I sitting here, shook hands.
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I had flown one load for a fellow, and it didn t work out well.
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The fellow that I gave it to got shot, and it took a while to get my money in.
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They didn t put as many kilos on the plane as they re supposed to, and so I wasn t going to work with them anymore.
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And my contact down there introduced me to Jorge Ochoa.
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And we went up in Envigada.
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We went up, and the gate opened, and we was escorted in.
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There must have been 50 men out in the yards, a hitching rail on an old house.
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And we was escorted right in.
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And there was a beautiful woman in there, I mean gorgeous, drop-dead beautiful.
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And she made us a cup of coffee, and then was ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa.
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And he had 12 telephones on his desk, and all of them was a different color.
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And he shook hands, was very friendly, spoke English.
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And he said that each one of those telephones represented another city in the United States.
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This is Chicago, and this is New York.
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If I ring, I knew who was calling.
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And so we chatted a while, and he asked me what type of airplanes I had and what experience I had flying across the U.S.
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border.
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And I told him he seemed pleased with it.
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And he called the lady in, and she went next door, and in came Pablo Escobar, and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar.
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And he asked the same questions again, and I answered them, and I says,
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And I asked them how much they paid, and they paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it.
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And so I said, how much you put on the plane?
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He said, 300, 500.
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So that s $1.5, $2.5 million for an eight-hour trip.
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It sounded pretty good to me.
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And we re talking about cocaine.
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Cocaine.
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And we re talking about Columbia.
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Columbia and cocaine and medellín cartel and Jorge Ochoa was one of the what would you say founding members?
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Probably the brains behind the whole thing the brains and spoke good English Yes, and there were nice people really nice people.
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Were you scared not at all?
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What s wrong with your mind that you weren t scared?
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Here s some of the most dangerous men in this world, and you weren t scared.
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Well, I knew I was going to do exactly what I said I was going to do.
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Mari and the children were down there.
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They went down, and they stayed in the hotel, five-star, treated royally on my first load.
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And they just did it as security to make sure that I wasn t a DEA agent.
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So I did the first load, and they can say they were hostages, but they really weren t.
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It was just insurance.
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So there was some integrity to the way they operated.
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Completely.
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I mean, straight up.
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The money was ironed and banded and just right, and the numbers were never once anything wrong with it.
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What would you attribute that honesty to?
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Within their own moral system and their own set of rules, why weren t people crossing the line and shaving off the top and injecting chaos into the system to where it would be unpredictable and people would be dishonest and greedy and all those kinds of things?
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That s true, most people are, but there s certain people at the top of the food chain that they don t need that.
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And if they re completely honest, then they don t have to think of, remember the lie they told.
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And plus, they re just honest to start with.
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They re making plenty of money.
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They was making as much money as I did.
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I ll tell you how that came about.
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I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year in Medellín, Colombia.
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And what they were doing, they didn t have any organization.
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And if one fellow had 10 kilos and he wanted it shipped to New York, he would tell his friend.
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And his friend says, sure, I ll ship it.
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I have a pilot, and I ll ship it up.
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And then he would look in the newspapers, oh, 40 kilos was busted in New Jersey.
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I m so sorry.
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Yours got busted.
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Bang, bang, he s dead.
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So here comes Jorge Ochoa and the three Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar and Gacho, and they decided that we will make an insurance company, that we would charge you $10,000 to take it to your contact in Miami.
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If it gets lost anywhere between the time I put it on the airplane, or the time you give it to us, and the time we give it to your man, we will replace it in Columbia for you.
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So there was no way anybody could lose.
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And I understand they got 100 tons piled up under that insurance program.
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And I was right there the first day.
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So I had all the work I could do.
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I would land and I said, when do you want me to come back?
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We re waiting on you, senor.
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Well, let me ask a difficult question.
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Some see Escobar as a brutal murderer, and some see him as maybe a Robin Hood-like figure who helped the poor.
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How do you see the man?
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Both of them.
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I think he started out, to be honest, with helping the poor, and then they had a war down there, and they blew up and killed his people, and the country was divided almost equally three ways.
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They had the military.
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They were just as much into it as anybody.
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And then you had the FARC guerrillas.
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They had about a third of the country.
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And then you had the Contras.
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It was like the white farmers.
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And they re the ones that I was dealing with.
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And they were at war with one another.
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And so if one of them started killing their people, well, I ll kill some of yours too.
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So that s how it happened.
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And then when I heard about Pablo Escobar blowing up that airliner and killing those women and children, I was sorry I ever shook his hand.
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That s brutal murder.
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So you would say Escobar s not a good man?
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Not at all.
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He s terrible.
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Now, looking back on it, when I met him, he was good.
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Did just exactly what he said he would do.
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Could he be a bad man and a man you can trust?
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Absolutely you could trust him, yes.
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So, from your perspective, in terms of business, he was reliable, he was honest, had integrity, you could work with him, and he felt safe?
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Completely.
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We flew up to his ranch and we brought out motorcycles to start with, and can you ride a motorcycle?
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Of course
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I can ride a motorcycle.
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So I took off across the grass, and there was a little ditch there.
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And the front wheel dropped in that thing, and I must have slid across that grass 20 feet before I got stopped.
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He almost fell off his bike waiting, because they knew what it was going to do.
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And then we got on horses and we went out there and pretended to round up some cows.
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And he put a Mac-10 machine gun pistol over my shoulder.
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Do you know how to use this?
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Well, I never had, but it was all right.
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I think it was like, okay, you got 10 bodyguards.
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What do you need me for?
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So that s the kind of time we laughed and talked and drove some cows over the stumps.
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You said Jorge Ochoa was perhaps the brains of the Medellin cartel.
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What was he like, and why do you say he was the brains?
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Well, he was a gentleman.
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And I suppose he shipped, and don t tell me how many more times of cocaine than Pablo did.
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Him and his brothers, you could tell by the, they had on each load, they was in duffel bags, and it was big football-shaped, fluffy stuff made with ether.
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They would have three horns on it, or a rattlesnake, or four X s on each bag.
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You kind of got to knowing which was which, and they shipped a lot.
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And he was just a gentleman.
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I took the family, we went one weekend to his ranch or his palatial place out near Barranquilla.
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And oh, he just treated the family, his family, his younger brother made a bullfight and we had skiing and little airplanes on floats on the water.
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He was really nice, and he was really nice.
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How do you make sense of the tension that a man could be a gentleman, could have integrity, but also be a murderer?
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Well, murder is a stronger word than killing.
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Can you explain the line, the gray area we re talking about?
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I mean, I ve just talking with Jocko Willink, and we talked a lot about killing in the context of military conflict, in the context of war.
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So there, there s a line between murder and killing that you can draw.
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What s the line that you re referring to?
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It s something similar.
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If people are shooting at you, and you shoot back and kill him, that s not murder whatsoever.
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He s trying to get away or out of the situation.
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some woman don t pay you and you send a hitman over to kill her and her children.
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That s murder.
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That s murder.
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Was Jorge involved in those kinds of things?
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I don t think so at all.
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I mean, he was just such a gentleman.
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He had a restaurant before and he was just smart.
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I understand that the first 10 kilos he sold, he was sitting on a motorcycle in the sidelines in a parking lot.
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When the DEA come in, he sped away.
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So he didn t come back to America.
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He was just smart.
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Some people just are savvy.
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And he was such a gentleman.
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And the whole family, the mother and the father, the two brothers, their sister, I was there when she was kidnapped.
1
SPEAKER_00
And finally, he kidnapped our, I guess, 100 leaders of the FARC and said, all right, if she don t come back, none of these are going to come back.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they made a deal.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is there something you can say about the power structure, the hierarchy of the Medellin cartel that you interacted with?
1
SPEAKER_01
Was it a dictatorship where Pablo ran everything?
1
SPEAKER_01
Was there a bunch of power centers?
1
SPEAKER_01
Was it like a company where you have CEO, CTO kind of thing, and then there s like managers and all those kinds of things?
1
SPEAKER_01
How did it run from a leadership perspective?
1
SPEAKER_00
I understand that about five of them got together.
1
SPEAKER_00
and made this, I would call it an insurance company, and now known as the Medellin Cartel.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t see any difference.
1
SPEAKER_00
Each one of them had their own business, and their people from the jungle or wherever made the cocaine, gave it to them, and they shipped it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so it didn t seem to be any power play between them at all.
1
SPEAKER_00
but my main contact was Jorge Ochoa, and Pablo Escobar was right there, and I saw plenty of stuff of him, too.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s strange that they didn t betray each other regularly.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, greed makes men betray each other.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do you explain that?
1
SPEAKER_01
How much betrayal did you see?
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t see any, absolutely none.
1
SPEAKER_00
If they shipped his 100 kilos, he got paid for it.
1
SPEAKER_00
If the other one shipped his, I m sure they got paid for it.
1
SPEAKER_00
How do you explain that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, there was no need to.
1
SPEAKER_00
The money was just unbelievable.
1
SPEAKER_00
You think about 500 kilos in the plane.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s $50,000 a kilo at the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they paid $5,000 to ship it.
1
SPEAKER_00
and they made 5,000 without even touching it.
1
SPEAKER_00
They just had somebody to load it on through the airplane.
1
SPEAKER_00
I gave it to their man in Miami.
1
SPEAKER_00
They gave it to whoever it belonged to by the marks on the duffel bags.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they was making just untold millions.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just no reason.
1
SPEAKER_01
But Greek and blind men, you know,
1
SPEAKER_01
It s still strange to me that there was not more betrayal.
1
SPEAKER_01
It speaks to something else, perhaps, that s bigger than money.
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe not, but it seems like just like in the casino, like you mentioned, we get accustomed to whatever level of money we have, we get accustomed very quickly.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then there s a tension that s natural between human beings.
1
SPEAKER_01
And when that tension combined with money, combined with power, combined with, like you mentioned, beautiful women,
1
SPEAKER_01
and a bit of violence, it seems that betrayal should be commonplace.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it s not.
1
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t, not at all.
1
SPEAKER_00
Carlos Lader, I don t know if he betrayed anybody, but he started that.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was running cocaine through the Bahamas, and he had the island.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t go.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was offered to fly with a DC-3 with that, but I didn t like it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I had my route through the oil wells in Louisiana, and so I didn t want to change.
1
SPEAKER_00
But he talked a lot, and I don t know, he betrayed, but they didn t like him.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so as you expand, there could be tensions that lead to conflict.
1
SPEAKER_01
Columbia was, like you said, an ultra-violent place.
1
SPEAKER_01
How did you survive?
1
SPEAKER_01
Who protected you?
1
SPEAKER_00
I was a hero.
1
SPEAKER_00
They liked me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I was just treated royally.
1
SPEAKER_00
All I did, I would come over El Banco.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s a radio station at the forks of the Magdalena River.
1
SPEAKER_00
I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the AM.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I d fly in at 10,000 feet, and I d see below me there d be a Cessna.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I d wiggle my wings, and he d wiggle his, and I d fall in behind him, and we might go 100, 200 miles.
1
SPEAKER_00
I d land on some jungle strip or some banana plantation, and they d fuel me up.
1
SPEAKER_00
I could eat steak in the night.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was just like treated royally.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, take off the next morning whenever I wanted to.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was just like that was protected.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was an honored guest.
1
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t anything like in that movie, putting a gun to your head and taking your sunglasses and betting.
1
SPEAKER_00
So one time I complained to Jorge Ochoa that the runway was pretty short that they were using.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I went back down there, and it looked like Los Angeles International.
1
SPEAKER_00
They had bulldozers in there.
1
SPEAKER_00
They had that thing 5,000 feet long.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just the next week, it was all done.
1
SPEAKER_00
The jungle was gone, and clay put up there.
1
SPEAKER_01
And all the while you were not afraid.
1
SPEAKER_01
You were treated like royalty.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, there I was.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was afraid when I landed in the United States.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, maybe let s go back to the beginning.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was the first time you flew an airplane with drugs on it?
1
SPEAKER_01
Tell me the story of the first time you smuggled drugs.
1
SPEAKER_00
All right, I flew down to Jalapa, Veracruz with a Cessna 182.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we landed at the town.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was a lovely town, just an old town, looked like Bible times.
1
SPEAKER_00
Women were washing their clothes in the streets with stone basins and the stream running through.
1
SPEAKER_00
I just was just dumbstruck.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was just so pretty.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I went in a church, a Catholic church, and it had the Stations of the Cross all carved magnificent.
1
SPEAKER_00
I d never seen that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I come home and told Marie about that.
1
SPEAKER_00
That just almost brought tears to my eyes.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was so beautiful.
1
SPEAKER_00
And three o clock the next morning, I went out to the airport and taxied down to the taxiway, and there was a guard came out.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I wanted to know what I was doing, and I pulled out.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was on the fire department out in Redondo Beach, California.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I pulled out my wallet, and in it was the fire department badge.
1
SPEAKER_00
And oh, he shook my hand and was so glad.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I taxied on down there, and we loaded up about 400 pounds in the plane.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I came on back, and I was running the headwinds more than I thought.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I landed on a little strip.
1
SPEAKER_00
You were talking about on the way back?
1
SPEAKER_00
on the way back, on the way north after we loaded up early in the morning.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s the only time I ever got vertigo.
1
SPEAKER_00
The mountains were coming down at a 30 or 40 degree angle, and the milky way was overhead.
1
SPEAKER_00
And somehow I wanted that airplane to be level with the stars.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it got me, and it s a phenomenal pile of vertigo.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s the only time I ever had it was on that load.
1
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, the wind was on the nose of that system.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t going to make it to the dry lake where I had fuel.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I landed on a little bitty strip, and there was a little house that was caved in, and there was a little boy named Lazarus, about six or seven years old, and he was herding some goats.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we put the marijuana in that house, and the man stayed with it while I flew into some town and got fuel and came back.
1
SPEAKER_00
We sat down with the lunch that I brought back, and little Lazarus sat there and ate with us, and we had a good time.
1
SPEAKER_00
We loaded on back and came home.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh wow, I wonder where he is now.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was it like to fly?
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe describe the details of, do you have to fly low?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is there details that are unique to this experience of flying an airplane with drugs on it, on board?
1
SPEAKER_00
One of the mistakes that just hundreds and hundreds and thousands of pilots make, they don t stop at the border going down and get their permit.
1
SPEAKER_00
Once you get a permit to be in Mexico, you ve got it for six months.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can go anywhere, any fishing village, any little town, any little place, show them this and you re welcome.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you don t have that, you go straight to jail.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you go down there and you think, okay, they re going to have fuel for me to come back and so forth.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, sorry, senor, that had a rusty leak in it.
1
SPEAKER_00
We don t have any.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, you better be able to go to town and get it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s what I did.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when I was coming back for several years, I would fly
1
SPEAKER_00
fly up at Mexicali and cross the border right at Calexico.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would act like I was landing on the Calexico side just after dark.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I d zip across the border and I d go over to the Salton Sea and go below sea level, 100 and something feet, I believe 170 feet, and come on up and go out there above Palm Springs and land out in 29 Palms in the desert and put my stuff under a Joshua tree and fly into town and get my pickup and go on back out and get it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that was fun.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then it got really dangerous.
1
SPEAKER_00
They had Operation Starlight, I believe was the name of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they caught a lot of pilots coming across the border.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I changed it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And by that time, I was flying bigger planes.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was flying Beach 18s.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I would refuel in Moolahe, halfway down on the Baja Peninsula.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then over in the middle, 20 miles from the nearest road, was a goat ranch where they milked goats and made cheese.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I would go there and unload the load coming up out of anywhere in southern Mexico.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I would land there, and a guy named Juan would put the marijuana under the trees, and I d fly in the mule, and they d wash my plane and gas it up, and I d eat lunch and rent a room for a few hours and take a nap and a shower, and then go back in the afternoon and fill up.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I would go northwest out of there and fly 200 miles off the coast of the island of Guadalupe.
1
SPEAKER_00
And from there, I would fly on a more northwestern heading, about 300 miles out over the Pacific.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I would come in behind the Santa Barbara Islands, down low, and then I d come up and go out in the desert and land.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I did that for the rest of the marijuana trips.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was the hardest part about flying those routes?
1
SPEAKER_01
The hardest part was getting good marijuana.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the hardest part isn t the flying?
1
SPEAKER_00
No, it s the flying, just like driving your car down.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then I had people that would bring me on strips that were just unworthy of an airplane.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like when I d land on a highway, and in the rainy season, I would come back to land again, and the guy wouldn t think about it, and he d have like little hills on both sides, and the wings were out there, where the grass and the weeds would grow up, and it sounded like
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it sounded like tearing the airplane apart when those wings hit, mowing the grass down both shoulders of the airplane.
1
SPEAKER_00
The weeds would grow up high in the tropics.
1
SPEAKER_00
So some of that stuff was bad.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, getting bad gasoline and telling me that land here in the light and knock the wheels off when you land.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you should have landed a little further up here, senor, or they d ditched down there.
1
SPEAKER_01
That sort of thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was it like landing on the highway?
1
SPEAKER_01
And when did you have to land on the highway?
1
SPEAKER_00
I landed on the highway most of my life, most of the times.
1
SPEAKER_00
In Mexico, first time I went down, there was a place called Pichulingui.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he had a 900-foot strip.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I would fly down, and I d carry gasoline with me.
1
SPEAKER_00
And Maury and I would go to the grocery store and buy all kinds of little goodies and candies and toys to bring to the children.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that sand strip in the bend of a river was just too short to take off with a load.
1
SPEAKER_00
So there was a young man there named Pedro, must have weighed much over 100, maybe 120 pounds.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he d get in a plane with me.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he d direct me 20, 30, 40 miles away to a highway.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the people walking, and the people would pull out in a two-ton truck with a machine gun on it, and a bunch of guys with arms, and they d block the road, and then another one would block it up about a mile away, and I d land right over that truck.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they d load me up, and it looked like a bucket brigade with the marijuana coming.
1
SPEAKER_00
I d shake hands with all of them, and I d take off right over the other trucks.
1
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes maybe 20, 30, 40 cars lined up.
1
SPEAKER_00
One time I remember,
1
SPEAKER_00
patrol car, a highway patrol car.
1
SPEAKER_00
He didn t have his lights on.
1
SPEAKER_00
I took off right over him.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then when I started flying to Louisiana, the bridge over the Mississippi River, there were several contractors that went broke.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that thing was out for years.
1
SPEAKER_00
And about five miles from the river was flashing red lights and a detour.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then the swamp on both sides of it, in the middle of it, we re growing up with 20 feet trees, and that was like an international runway from anywhere in the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I landed on that, and over and over, those red lights were just like the end of a runway.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then the next morning, we d go out there and scrub the marks off the highway where I d landed before daylight.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_01
Let s go to somebody you ve known well, somebody who s also a drug smuggler, is Barry Seal.
1
SPEAKER_01
Who is Barry Seal?
1
SPEAKER_01
How did you meet him?
1
SPEAKER_00
Barry Seal is a friend of mine.
1
SPEAKER_00
Mari and I and the children went down in Honduras, and we went up Lake Azul, I believe it was, and we were looking at a ranch to buy.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was looking for something in Central America where I d have a halfway place.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it was lovely.
1
SPEAKER_00
We stayed up there for some days, and our clothes got muddy, and we went in the river and all kinds of things.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we got to San Pedro Sula, and we was going back to New Orleans.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we went to the cleaners to get our clothes, and most all of them was in there.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they go, oh, senor, they ll be ready tomorrow morning.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re not ready now.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, the plane leaves at 9 o clock or whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I told Mari for her and the children to go into the airport because it d be easier for one on a standby flight.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I went to the laundromat for the clothes, and they were ready, and there was a pile of them.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I put them on my back and got in the taxi, and the old taxi was driving with it, and I gave him $100 to go faster, and he just blew his horn more rapid.
1
SPEAKER_00
Finally, we got to the airport, and I jumped out and ran around on the tarmac, and here s a brand new 727 taxiing out.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m waving to the pilot, and he s a young fellow.
1
SPEAKER_00
He waves back.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then I see Mario s face in the cockpit, and the nose goes down where he puts on brakes, and he laughs, and he puts the stairwell out.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I run for the stairwell, and he pulls it back up and goes like a hitchhiker going to pick you up and go again.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then he put it out, and I got on, and the whole crowd clapped, and I m coming on with that load of clothes.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I go way down in the middle, and the plane s full.
1
SPEAKER_00
And Miriam, my daughter, was about nine years old then.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she was sitting in the middle, and by the window was Barry Seal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Of course, I didn t know it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I sat in the middle, and we took off, and the wheels come up with clunk.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I got up about 5,000 feet, and we had a little clunk.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she said, what was that, Daddy?
1
SPEAKER_00
I said, he just turned on his autopilot.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that fella reached over, and I looked at him, I said, he looks like CIA or FBI, something.
1
SPEAKER_00
He ain t supposed to be here.
1
SPEAKER_00
Clear blue eyes, gentleman looking man.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he said, you fly these things?
1
SPEAKER_00
I said, I got a few hours, mister.
1
SPEAKER_00
He said, I ll fly them too or something.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he said, my name s Barry Seal.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he reached over near him and shook hands.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we got to talking, and I thought, there s no choice of seats on this.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just open seating, but I don t believe him one bit.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he started talking about he just got out of jail that morning, just got out of prison.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said, uh-huh.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he told me that he d been a pilot with the TWA and this and other, and told me what he was for.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we had a nice conversation for a couple hours in New Orleans.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t believe him.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he got off in front of us.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what a crowd of people to meet him.
2
SPEAKER_00
An old mother and a wife and little children hanging on to him, crying and hugging and kissing him.
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, he was telling the truth.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I reached over and gave him a little piece of paper.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had him already write it out with our address.
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, Barry, I might have some work for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
What was he in jail for?
2
SPEAKER_00
He got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine in a small plane.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so he s served a year.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was from Colombia?
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know where he come from.
2
SPEAKER_00
He got caught in Honduras, probably refueling.
2
SPEAKER_00
But he d been in prison down there before for bringing explosives to the Cuban Contras.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he lost his job with the airlines.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then later on, I found out he was ex-CIA and George Bush Sr.
2
SPEAKER_00
 s protege and had a thousand parachute jumps and was there.
2
SPEAKER_00
He was a hotshot, Miles.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a million questions I wanna ask here, but maybe can we linger on it a little bit longer?
2
SPEAKER_01
What was your relationship with him like?
2
SPEAKER_01
You were a drug smuggler, he s a drug smuggler.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re friends.
2
SPEAKER_01
How often do you guys talk?
2
SPEAKER_01
How often do you work together?
2
SPEAKER_01
What was the relationship like?
2
SPEAKER_00
I ll back up and just finish where I started off there.
2
SPEAKER_00
I gave him the thing, I said, Barry, I may have some work for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know I got some work for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I said I d come out to Santa Barbara.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so, I don t know, a week or two later, he flew out and went to our house and stayed with us a couple of days.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I had an almost brand new Aero Commander 690B.
2
SPEAKER_00
That thing was a turboprop and it was hot.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was the hottest thing I d ever had.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I said, let s go, Barry.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s see what you can do.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I m sorry I said that.
2
SPEAKER_00
We got about 10,000 feet.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he was like one of them Blue Angel pilots.
2
SPEAKER_00
He wrung that thing out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I said, that s enough.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then he did a falling leaf.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s where you cut the engines and the plane falls from side to side.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I saw Bob Hoover do that in an air show once.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s the only person I ever saw do it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was, my hand was white knuckle hanging onto the seat.
2
SPEAKER_00
You shut off the engine?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he shut off the engines and landed flying side by side like this.
2
SPEAKER_01
How do you explain that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Was he just a wild man or was he sufficiently skilled to wear it?
2
SPEAKER_00
He was sufficiently skilled.
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
He knew what he was doing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I can get a plane from one spot to another, and I guess I m known as a good pilot, but that guy was an aerobatic.
2
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, he stayed with us a couple of days, and then I told him, I said, this plane needs tanking.
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, I got some work down in Columbia, needs to come back to Louisiana, and I need 2,500-mile range.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, I got somebody in Mena, Arkansas to do that and keep their mouth shut.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I gave him $10,000, and he flew away.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in a few days, he called me and says, come to my house in Baton Rouge.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I went out to his house in Baton Rouge, and I stayed with him for a few days, and that plane was tanked.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, beautiful from stem to stern.
2
SPEAKER_00
I could went from Bolivia to Canada with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then I hired him to fly, and he was funny.
2
SPEAKER_00
I paid him $1,000,000 a trip.
2
SPEAKER_00
I paid him $2,000 a kilo, so about $1,000,000 a trip.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t get paid until the people received it.
2
SPEAKER_00
They had to ship it to Chicago and New York, and then the money come back.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it was a two or three-week pipeline.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I always had to pay him before he d go again.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he d bellyache.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he d moan and groan.
2
SPEAKER_00
One time I gave him a million dollars and I put it in a box real nice.
2
SPEAKER_00
So how big is a box that contains a million dollars?
2
SPEAKER_00
So we re talking about $100 bills?
2
$100.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not very big.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can put it in a large briefcase.
2
SPEAKER_00
It weighs exactly 10 kilos.
2
SPEAKER_00
Each bill weighs a gram, so you can weigh your money and almost get it exactly right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Twenty-something pounds is a million dollars.
2
SPEAKER_00
Twenty-two pounds.
2
SPEAKER_00
Twenty-two pounds.
2
SPEAKER_00
A hundred dollar bills.
2
SPEAKER_00
But in one dollar bills, it s one ton, 2,200 pounds.
2
SPEAKER_00
We didn t even accept them.
2
SPEAKER_00
Were you the one that introduced Barry Seale to Pablo Escobar?
2
SPEAKER_00
No.
2
SPEAKER_00
I didn t introduce him at all.
2
SPEAKER_00
And our deal was that you don t meet my people.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we just kind of crossed you working for me to fly the airplanes.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he wanted these Panther conversions, cost $400,000 each, with a storm scope and radar.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I bought anything he wanted.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s that mean, sorry to interrupt, Panther conversions?
2
SPEAKER_00
A Panther conversion was these people called Panther.
2
SPEAKER_00
They took everything out from the firewall, the instruments and all, and converted them, and put Q-tip propellers on them, full-bladed, and very quiet.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the CIA developed those in Southeast Asia for running behind the lines.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s where Barry had flown those things, so he knew about them.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s what he wanted, and that s what we got him.
2
SPEAKER_00
How does that connect to Pablo?
2
SPEAKER_00
And so he worked for you, and you got those upgrades.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think he flew about 30 loads for me, and then I got arrested for everything in the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
I got 35 years sentence.
2
SPEAKER_00
But let me back up a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
Barry was our friend.
2
SPEAKER_00
Mari and I are both friends.
2
SPEAKER_01
We should pause real quick and say Mari is your wife and hopefully she ll convince her to join us in a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_01
She s the love of your life and sort of she weaves in and out of many of these stories that you tell.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
She was there.
2
SPEAKER_01
She was behind the scenes.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I kept her out of it completely.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then also you mentioned Miriam as your daughter.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Our son was a baby, and I remember we went out to the festival.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was my favorite restaurant in Carl Gables.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, God, it was good.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Barry knew about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Anyhow, we went out to dinner, and so we came back and there was no rooms.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, very well, spend the night with us.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he goes to our hotel room with us, and we got two big beds in the Omni Hotel.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he lays over there and gets down to his striped undershorts and his T-shirt, and he puts the baby up on his belly and gives him the bottle and says, mm, ain t that good, Red?
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, my, my.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he just feeds the baby.
2
SPEAKER_00
We laugh and talk, and that s how close we were that we could all stay in a hotel room together.
2
SPEAKER_00
And would you say he s a good man?
2
SPEAKER_00
a wonderful man, a gentleman, southern gentleman.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just looked after his mother, his family, everybody around him.
2
SPEAKER_00
Everybody loved Barry.
2
SPEAKER_00
He just had a little smile on his face always.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you got arrested, and then what happened to Barry?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, Barry knew the people that
2
SPEAKER_00
unloaded, of course, or he sent the cars down and all that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he met the unloader, a guy named Lito, Luis Carlos Bustamante, a Venezuelan.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so he just kept on flying.
2
SPEAKER_00
But he, I believe, had three of my airplanes at $400,000 apiece, and they owed me some money.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, he collected a lot of that and gave Mario the money and put it in his safe and
2
SPEAKER_00
Took her to his house and all after I got arrested, sent a lawyer in.
2
SPEAKER_00
He got me the best lawyer in the country, Albert Krieger.
2
SPEAKER_00
He was head of the defense team for all of America.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wonderful man.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you tell the story of the months that led up to Barry s assassination?
2
SPEAKER_01
What did you know?
2
SPEAKER_01
What did you sense?
2
SPEAKER_01
What did you think?
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, when I got out of prison, I hadn t been out long, I was eating breakfast and there was Ronald Reagan s face right in the television.
2
SPEAKER_00
We have absolute proof that the communist Sandinista government is in the cocaine running business.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there was that fat lady, the C-126, on the runway with the bellied in, and I thought, oh God, he had done it.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I had heard that Barry might have been working with them.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it wasn t long before- Working with- With the DEA or whoever, he was no longer on our side, you know.
2
SPEAKER_01
So can you clarify how you got that from the Reagan making a statement about, we ve heard- Okay, there was his plane.
2
SPEAKER_00
There was Barry s plane, and okay, on the way north, we could stop in Nicaragua and land on a military base or on a base that they used as crop dusters and all, and refuel.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so that shortened our trip, we d go further into the jungle and come up, and that was what Pablo Escobar and Ochoa and them, they was associates with the people in
2
SPEAKER_01
Nicaragua.
2
SPEAKER_01
So Barry was, if that plane was there, that means Barry was feeding the DEA information.
2
SPEAKER_00
He was working with them at that time.
2
SPEAKER_00
But let me back up a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
When I was flying, and I told Barry we would refuel, and the train s airplane, the load s in Belize, where I had a spot up there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then that s when they told me we can refuel in Nicaragua.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you fly all the way, and Barry couldn t believe it.
2
SPEAKER_00
He says, all right, but I wanted to land.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had a place in Louisiana for $10,000 that I could land, unload, and a chair for all of them was paid off.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he said, no, no, no.
2
SPEAKER_00
I can t get caught in Maine, Arkansas.
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, what do you mean you can t get caught in Maine, Arkansas?
2
SPEAKER_00
You get caught anywhere.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, I can t.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it s going to cost you $50,000 every time my wheels touch the ground.
2
SPEAKER_01
Why, can you explain why he can t get caught?
2
SPEAKER_00
He said he was hooked up with him to the very top.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he even said, I m gonna have dinner with the governor tonight.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s, at that time, Mr. Bill Clinton.
2
SPEAKER_00
Undoubtedly.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, did Bill Clinton, did you give him any money?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I said, no, I never gave the man any money.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it was like the money that I had that went to Grand Cayman Islands.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I told my lawyer, I said, I never touched that money.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, you don t have to fondle it to be guilty.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what I mean, there s a lot of conspiracy theories around the relationship between Barry Seale and the Clintons.
2
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_01
What evidence do we have?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, what would you say from your best understanding of what was the relationship between Bill Clinton and Barry Seale?
2
SPEAKER_00
Barry said, and he knew that he couldn t get caught in Arkansas.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when that movie was going to come out and be called Mina, somebody stopped it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, they stopped it dead in the tracks for two or three years, and the producer even quit.
2
SPEAKER_00
You mean the American Made with Tom Cruise movie?
2
SPEAKER_00
It was going to be called Mina?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s the name that was written and produced in Mina.
2
SPEAKER_00
And waiting on Hillary to be elected, they would not let that movie out.
2
SPEAKER_00
and that movie was changed drastically.
2
SPEAKER_01
But to push back on that, that doesn t mean there s truth there.
2
SPEAKER_01
That means they were worried about the power of the conspiracy theory, which stuck.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
Some conspiracy theories, just because they re popular doesn t mean they re true.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it also doesn t mean they re not true.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s ones that are not very popular that could be true.
2
SPEAKER_01
But that one really stuck.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, what s your sense?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I paid one and a half million dollars for burial land at Mena, Arkansas.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I was pretty well assured that he couldn t get caught.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I said, well, I can t get caught in Columbia.
2
SPEAKER_00
We can t get caught in Nicaragua.
2
SPEAKER_00
I guess we got a license.
2
SPEAKER_00
that we went for.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when you say I can t get caught, just to clarify, there s a there s a sense where this is a safe place to land.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, like completely safe.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you don t think he was referring to some kind of, you know,
2
SPEAKER_01
like my grandfather who fought in World War II would talk about bullets can t hit him.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s almost like believing.
2
SPEAKER_00
He was taking that $50,000 and giving it to somebody.
2
SPEAKER_01
To somebody.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Barry was honest, so he wasn t just taking it from me because he was making a million dollars and he didn t care for the $50,000.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh man, taking the story forward, the months leading up to his assassination, what do you understand
2
SPEAKER_01
why he was assassinated, who were the players involved?
2
SPEAKER_01
Maybe could you have stopped it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I ll tell you, after I saw Reagan s face on the television saying we have the absolute proof, the phone rang and it was Barry.
2
SPEAKER_00
I hadn t heard from him in a couple of years.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, I m coming out tonight, Roger.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh boy.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he came out and he said, I ll meet you in this Prince restaurant.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t even know it in Santa Barbara.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I walked in, there s about 20 or 30 people in there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he was all 30, 40 years old.
2
SPEAKER_00
Women wouldn t
2
SPEAKER_00
plastic or leather skirts and me in the blue jeans.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I looked around and Barry was at the back.
2
SPEAKER_00
He was leaned up, he d gained weight.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I walked up and I said, Barry, are you wired?
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, no.
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, well, I m not going to talk to these DEA agents.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said, every one of them.
2
SPEAKER_00
With jeans and skirts, I like it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, well, Barry, I m going to sit here and you just talk to me, buddy, and tell me what s on your mind.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he sat there and he just went to talking and he told me about he was left holding a bag.
2
SPEAKER_00
What do you mean by that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like that nobody s supported him?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think that somehow or another, he was, and I don t know this, I mean, this is just what happened, putting it all together, that he had some CIA buddies that was pretending, we re going to supply all over North with arms.
2
SPEAKER_00
And with that, you can land cocaine back here by the ton.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he s taking his little planes and putting some AK-47s and maybe ammunition or whatever, and takes it down to the country against the Communist Party of Nicaragua, where we ve been landing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Oliver North was involved in this.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when all that—and so his CIA buddies were certainly involved, and we know they were.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Barry had been in the CIA earlier when he first got out of school.
2
SPEAKER_00
When, as I say, the shit hit the fan, they all fled and left Barry Holt in the back.
2
SPEAKER_00
The CIA and the DEA.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Not the DEA, the CIA.
2
SPEAKER_00
The DEA wasn t in on it.
2
SPEAKER_00
The CIA was selling that cocaine, bringing it in.
2
SPEAKER_01
Just to clarify, what s Iran-Contra scandal?
2
SPEAKER_01
What was the alleged involvement of the CIA in using drug trade to fund things?
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you know?
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you think is true?
2
SPEAKER_00
What should we know?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I know what I know is true, that Barry was taking a small amount of arms back to Central America and giving them to whoever Oliver North group were.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oliver North was a colonel that got implemented and almost brought the government down.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so they said, all right, we re getting the guns from Iran.
2
SPEAKER_00
and we re taking cocaine to pay for.
2
SPEAKER_00
And since Congress won t give us money to fight this war, we re gonna circumvent it.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that was a whole thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it was CIA s effort to circumvent the funding mechanisms of government by selling drugs.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, but it was a handful of renegade CIA agents.
2
SPEAKER_00
They were Barry s friends.
2
SPEAKER_00
that was making a load, load of money.
2
SPEAKER_00
Tons of it come up.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you would like to read the book, The Big White Lie, The CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic, the CIA put, according to the book, Michael Levine, I didn t remember his name last time I talked, wrote that book, and he was a head DEA agent that exposed this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the CIA tried to kill him.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he says they put crack cocaine, they developed, their chemists developed crack.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they put it in every city in the United States on one weekend.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they were bringing it up by the tons, and that s for sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Barry was bringing it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can I ask you a small tangent question?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you think the public should trust the CIA and the DEA?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you think they re mostly good people that are carrying out a good mission?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because this kind of makes it sound like there s renegade agents that are just doing whatever the hell they want and with sometimes no regard for human life.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s certainly true, but that s not everybody in there.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s just sometimes you get a few policemen in the department that do these things.
2
SPEAKER_00
I believe that our government is good.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think we ve got some fools running it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how we get them there.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think I know.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so what was Barry s involvement here?
2
SPEAKER_00
So Barry leaned back in that chair and he told me that he got caught with one and a half tons and he bellied it in the runway in Nicaragua.
2
SPEAKER_00
had cameras flashing inside and out, and he flew it back to Homestead with an agent there, and he brought the agent over.
2
SPEAKER_00
Jake Jacobson, really nice fellow.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think he was a crop duster.
2
SPEAKER_00
If we d have got along, we d have been on the right side.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so we sat there and drank Chevy s Regal until I got pie-eyed.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Barry told me about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
He said that he went to see Edwin Meese.
2
SPEAKER_00
He got out on bail, and he flew his Learjet up to Washington and went in to see the Attorney General, Edwin Meese.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they run him out of the office.
2
SPEAKER_00
The next day he went back and said, I have absolute proof
2
SPEAKER_00
that the CIA is bringing tons of cocaine, or they re running tons of cocaine into the United States.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Edward Meese put him up with this agent, Jacobson, I believe it was.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they went down and got one and a half tons.
2
SPEAKER_00
And on the way back, they bellied it in, and Pablo Escobar and some of the other ones, General there in Nicaragua, you can see them
2
SPEAKER_00
totin  it from one plane to the other.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s in the book called The Kings of Cocaine.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s got a mention of me too, and also the other one has a mention of me in it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Said I m in more files for the DEA than Noriega.
2
SPEAKER_01
So who wanted to get rid of Barry?
2
SPEAKER_01
Who wanted to get rid of Barry more, the cartels or the CIA?
2
SPEAKER_00
The cartel.
2
SPEAKER_00
So Barry leaned back and he told me the story.
3
SPEAKER_01
The tears came down between his fingers as he put his hands over his eyes, and he said, I just couldn t do it, Roger.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just couldn t do three life sentences.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ve told him everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
I went to Congress, and I ve testified before Congress.
3
SPEAKER_01
He testified before Congress for all these things that he d done, and he said, I told him all about you.
3
SPEAKER_01
But you re under my umbrella.
3
SPEAKER_01
You got to testify with me before grand jury in Miami. 
3
SPEAKER_01
And so the guy said, you can come down, the DEA agent said, you can come down tomorrow with Mari, first class, or I ll take you down in chains.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you don t testify with Barry, the only place you ll ever see your wife and family again is in a federal prison visiting room.
3
SPEAKER_01
Was that a difficult conversation, looking at him?
3
SPEAKER_01
My guts was just like ice water.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t testify against my friends.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just can t do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
How am I going to do it?
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t work with people, and he was honest with me.
3
SPEAKER_01
How am I going to testify against them?
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t spend the rest of my life in a federal prison.
3
SPEAKER_01
What on earth, what a mess, Barry, you ve got me into.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that a kind of betrayal there?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, but I wish he d left me out of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I understand him getting in such a mess that he told, because if the CIA and whoever else was behind him betrayed him, then he s going to tell everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I says, all right, I ll be in Miami.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Mario and I flew down first class, and I went to a lawyer, one of the biggest lawyers in Miami, and I said, man, I am in a mess.
3
SPEAKER_01
This fella s told everything and I ve got to say something, but I m not a snitch, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what can I do?
3
SPEAKER_01
And he said, well, being a snitch is like being pregnant.
3
SPEAKER_01
You either are or you re not.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he says, I don t represent snitches, but if you want to fight this case, I ll do it for $600,000.
3
SPEAKER_01
Boy, my face turned red.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I m not a snitch. 
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, well, that s what you re talking about.
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, let me tell you something.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you go in there and say one thing and sign that paper and you don t tell them everything you know, then they will convict you of everything you ve ever done and you tell them.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you can t do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I said, Barry, I m having trouble with a lawyer.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll go tomorrow, let s go.
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, all right, use my lawyer.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he gave me his card, the lawyer s card.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Murray and I went to the festival restaurant that night, and Barry and Debbie came in.
3
SPEAKER_01
She was dressed pretty, and Barry was.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so we was already about finished, so we had dessert together.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, Barry, they re going to kill you, friend.
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, no, they ain t going to kill me.
3
SPEAKER_01
So and so, such and such is gone, and this and the other.
3
SPEAKER_01
I said, Barry, they re going to kill you, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t deny it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, I didn t tell him I wasn t going to testify, so I hugged his neck.
3
SPEAKER_01
I really, like, and we fled to Brazil.
3
SPEAKER_01
I took Mari and the children and went to Brazil.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you decided there you re not going to testify?
3
SPEAKER_01
On you.
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know what I could do.
3
SPEAKER_01
I talked to a lawyer.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I just didn t, I didn t know what I could do, but the best in Miami said what he told me.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I had to go.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you went to Brazil.
3
SPEAKER_00
We went to Brazil.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you have a conversation with anybody at the cartel?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s such an interesting moment that tests the man s character to not snitch.
3
SPEAKER_00
And did you have a conversation with anybody?
3
SPEAKER_00
No.
3
SPEAKER_00
Pablo with, about it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Not at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s just understood.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just didn t, couldn t do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But how many men like you are there?
3
SPEAKER_01
Not many.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had all my friends testified against me.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had 11 friends and never one of them put their finger up.
3
SPEAKER_01
Roger did it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was facing life, continuing criminal enterprise.
3
SPEAKER_01
And still you couldn t do it?
3
SPEAKER_00
I just couldn t do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you ever get respect from the cartels for that?
3
SPEAKER_00
From the people in the cartel?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, there was a time I got back and stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
They owe me money and I can t get it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s about money.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just mean about human beings.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I think so.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I ve been back down there and I ve been welcome.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have my contact.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when I was in Brazil, I was trying to get this money.
3
SPEAKER_01
They owe me three and a half million dollars.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I called up there and he was going to pay me.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I got 600,000 today and I ll get you some more tomorrow.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then the next week I called.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hey, I got great news.
3
SPEAKER_01
Great news.
3
SPEAKER_01
Barry Seal s been killed.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, oh, no.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I went back to the hotel.
3
SPEAKER_01
We was up in the northern part of Brazil.
3
SPEAKER_01
And where was it, Madi?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I went back and I told Mari and Miriam, and they cried and I cried.
3
SPEAKER_01
I really cried.
3
SPEAKER_01
How is that great news from the cartel perspective?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, now there s no case against me and him and them.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you know who killed him?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ll tell you about that story.
3
SPEAKER_01
On the first load I did, I landed at a banana plantation, and it was raining, and it was a muddy strip, clay.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they put the 300 kilos of cocaine in, and the ugliest man you could imagine, named Ronaldo, got in there with a Mac-10, and he would make sure I took it to Louisiana.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this is many years before.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, a couple of years before.
3
SPEAKER_01
So anyway, we took off and the mud got up in the wheel well so thick until the wheels wouldn t come up.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I m going 200 miles an hour instead of 300 miles an hour with wheels coming down.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I can t go back there.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I do, I m going to be in the same situation until the sun dries it out in a few days.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so, but in Belize, I had a runway that had been used for $10,000 used to refuel.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I told the guy, listen, we got to land in Belize to refuel.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, he put the Mac-10 and I ll shoot you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Go ahead, fool, you re gonna die too.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it was in the turf.
3
SPEAKER_00
He wasn t just ugly, he was also angry.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was a bad, bad killer.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so he s the one to actually kill Barry.
3
SPEAKER_01
The one that went up on the first load with me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And Ronaldo, and he s doing life.
3
SPEAKER_01
So he s just a killer.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s doing life in Louisiana.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wonder who, is it known who made that decision?
3
SPEAKER_01
The younger Ochoa brother, I understand, Favio, was the one paid for the hit.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that, but that s what I ve heard, and it probably sounds about right.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s down in Jessup, Georgia, doing a long, long time.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think he s about to get out.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s been in 30 years or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
The movie American Made.
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you think that movie got right, what did it get wrong?
3
SPEAKER_00
Almost everything wrong.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was disgustingly wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, which parts?
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you maybe elaborate?
3
SPEAKER_01
One movie was about Barry Seale and it just didn t even, it was nothing, whoever wrote it had no idea who Barry Seale was.
3
SPEAKER_01
They sat in a rocking chair and just tried to think of what was some baby bashing,
3
SPEAKER_01
drug dealer doing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s just like, God, you just don t have any idea of the spirit of the man.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they wanted just to try to tell a fun story without actually studying the story.
3
SPEAKER_01
They didn t know him.
3
SPEAKER_01
They just had no idea.
3
SPEAKER_01
And Barry was such a nice person, such a really nice gentleman person.
3
SPEAKER_01
They talked to you or no?
3
SPEAKER_01
No.
3
SPEAKER_01
The people that made the movie?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I see all these people telling him about Barry and never met him.
3
SPEAKER_01
They tell him all about him.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think that s just ridiculous.
3
SPEAKER_01
And for one thing, for his character, coming out of whorehouses and all that, that was just like ugly.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then down in Columbia, putting a gun to his head, going to take his sunglasses, and then he put $25 million worth of cocaine on his plane.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then they re going to bet $100 he don t have enough room to take off.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s just insane.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, just the whole thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then he s talking to the DEA agents when he s coming up.
3
SPEAKER_01
You don t know what frequency they own, how he s got five planes and they all split when the DEA comes out.
3
SPEAKER_01
These are just somebody s fantasy.
3
SPEAKER_00
But those are like, those are details of the man, details of the story.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there some big profound things they missed about just this whole period?
3
SPEAKER_00
About that something that s really important to you that was missed?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, they just try to sensationalize on little things that people remember and it s just not true.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s just, it was just like a business deal and good people and good airplanes and good flying and
3
SPEAKER_01
It was like a good watch that was made.
3
SPEAKER_01
It just clicked and it just went on.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they missed all that.
3
SPEAKER_01
They tried to make it sound like it s something very ugly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you think there was a story that could have been told way better and still be a hell of a good story?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh my goodness, yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, there s a series called Chernobyl done by HBO.
3
SPEAKER_00
And because I have sort of family connected to that period, they did an incredible job of being historically accurate.
3
SPEAKER_00
and only not being historically accurate when it helped the story, only in those rare cases, when they on purpose left the story to make it easier for people to understand, but it was still somehow accurate.
3
SPEAKER_00
And even though all the actors were British actors speaking English with a British accent, it was still somehow accurate.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like they captured the spirit.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it was historically accurate and the spirit was captured.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was one of the most incredible series I ve ever seen.
3
SPEAKER_00
It convinced me that.
3
SPEAKER_00
The movie was made by non-Russians.
3
SPEAKER_00
It convinced me that if you really care about a story, you don t have to have been brought up in it, you don t even need to speak the language.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re truly a scholar of it, if you talk to a lot of people, if you learn, if you just pour your heart and soul into it, you can create something really special.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so your sense is you could do that with the story with this period of time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was a story that needs to be told.
3
SPEAKER_01
It needs to be told in the correct way, not like we re trying to bash a certain angle.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, if Netflix or HBO are watching this, you need to tell the story of Roger Rees, in my opinion.
3
SPEAKER_00
There you go.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is this a young picture of you?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
There you go.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s from National Geographic.
3
SPEAKER_00
Jorge Archoa, Pablo Escobar, it s you, Roger and Barry.
3
SPEAKER_00
Smuggler, a memoir.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I really do hope that they make a movie of this one.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a movie called Blow that tells the story of George Young, Boston George.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you know George Young?
3
SPEAKER_00
That s one way to ask it.
3
SPEAKER_00
The other is, what do you think of the movie Blow?
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know George Young, but it was a wonderful movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely, it captured it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It did.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it did.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the way it should be.
3
SPEAKER_01
So he was a little bit before your time?
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly the same time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly the same time.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was using stewardesses to fly the marijuana out of Manhattan Beach, and I was on the fire department in Redondo Beach, 10 miles away, flying it up, sending it back.
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody was sending it back.
3
SPEAKER_01
He might have been sending it back.
3
SPEAKER_01
But he didn t have near the excitement that I did.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was shot down twice.
3
SPEAKER_01
I escaped from five different prisons.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison.
3
SPEAKER_01
So he didn t have all that fun that I had.
3
SPEAKER_01
Fun in quotes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
So yours is a heck of a fun adventure.
3
SPEAKER_00
Just to linger on a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
So Johnny Depp plays George and Ray Liotta plays his father.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s this son-father kind of scene at the end.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, it s heartbreaking.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like that scene paints a picture of a life that could have been had if none of this wild drug smuggling happened.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t usually, I mean, I don t almost, I really never get like teary-eyed in a movie, but that got me.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s almost like confronting at the end of your life what your life could have been with your father, the way he calls him Georgie.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like you fucked up, Georgie.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, I did too.
3
SPEAKER_01
I really, really did.
3
SPEAKER_01
Mario waited for me all those years and the children raised them without me, visiting me in prisons all over the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s unbelievable.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s just nothing s worth that kind of money.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you tell the story of when you were tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison?
3
SPEAKER_01
I sure can, and I m smiling, but it was nothing to smile about, I can tell you.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was in a pool, and a gentleman came over and shook hands with me and put handcuffs on me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I thought, what in the world?
3
SPEAKER_01
That was one of the nice hotels.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they put me in a jail cell, and I sat there, and all the trunks and thieves and stuff kept coming in, and they had a bucket, and it overrun.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I remember, like, 18 people in a room about 12-foot square.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it was hot, and I thought, somebody s got to come get me.
3
SPEAKER_01
This ain t real.
3
SPEAKER_01
I hadn t done anything.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was a pilot come to see me up in Hermosillo, and he stopped, and he made a mistake and went to the International Runway instead of where he was supposed to go.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he had my phony name in his pocket, so they got me.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they said I was a drug smoker.
3
SPEAKER_01
So after about three days, they put me back into the back, and it was a torture place.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they put me in a little cell.
3
SPEAKER_01
I guess it wasn t six feet.
3
SPEAKER_01
It must have been about five feet square and about 12 feet high.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was June, the end of June, and it was hot.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean hot.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they left me in there for, I guess, a few days.
3
SPEAKER_01
You didn t know.
3
SPEAKER_01
So every once in a while, they d come drag me out.
3
SPEAKER_01
And first off, they d put my head underwater, and it had seltzer in it of some kind.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I took one whiff of that, and three or four of them couldn t hold me down.
3
SPEAKER_01
So then I learned that just before you have to breathe, tear loose like that, and they ll let you up.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that was the first treatment.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then they started beating me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they beat me with a blackjack and rubber hose until I was black and blue and yellow from the bottom of my feet to my head.
3
SPEAKER_01
What did they want from you?
3
SPEAKER_01
They wanted me to sign a confession that I was a drug smuggler.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they put the papers under your nose.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is all over if you ll sign.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I knew if you signed, you got six years.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t going to sign.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t going to sign.
3
SPEAKER_00
But they didn t want you to snitch on anybody, they just wanted to say... No, they just wanted me to sign that paper.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you still didn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ain t bout to.
3
SPEAKER_01
A beatin  ain t that bad.
3
SPEAKER_01
So anyhow, he s getting me to the good part.
3
SPEAKER_01
So then they come and they take me out, and I m buck naked, and they bend me over, and they have things to pull you, like chains, click, click, click, click, click.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they bent me over, and they put butter on my bum, and they commenced to put hot chili pepper up there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that stuff was bad.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it was red hot.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that was awful.
3
SPEAKER_01
And still.
3
SPEAKER_01
And just awful.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but still you didn t... I didn t think about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I guess if I d have known he was going to kill me, I wouldn t have done it, but I wasn t about
3
SPEAKER_01
You get hurt bad enough, you ll pass out.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I didn t pass out, so I was all right.
3
SPEAKER_01
So then the last thing they did was they brought a dead man in there, and he was frozen.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was wrapped in newspaper, little strips about a half inch wide, just like a mummy, and he was frozen.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they hung him on the wall with a meat hook.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you next, son of a bitch, you next.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so he s sitting there like this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as he starts to thaw out, which is pretty quick, it looks like he s crying.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it looks like he s peeing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the papers start unraveling on him.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the formaldehyde puddles on the floor.
3
SPEAKER_01
What a smell, that rotten,
3
SPEAKER_01
the insides and the formaldehyde, and there was a little space.
3
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t even a half inch high under the door.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I lay on that filthy floor with my cheek and put my lips right up under that door and was sucking that fresh air.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I went to sleep after some time.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I know where Walt Disney gets his ideas.
3
SPEAKER_01
I saw white, pink pigs with wings on them, all kinds of stuff flying around.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when I woke up, I didn t know which was real and which was the nightmare.
3
SPEAKER_01
It took me a minute to figure out
3
SPEAKER_01
where I was and what was going on.
3
SPEAKER_00
How did you stay mentally strong through that time?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like what?
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that I did.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I was mentally strong.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I was, just like I am now.
3
SPEAKER_00
Stubborn.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you could be that man that could have killed you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I could have.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what gave you hope?
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you have hope?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or you were just a stubborn son of a bitch?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think some of both of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think they aren t going to keep you here forever.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, you re going to get out into the prison or they re going to let you go or something.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you sign that paper, you ain t going nowhere.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I want to go home.
3
SPEAKER_01
I d got shot down a few weeks before that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I got shot from out of the sky.
3
SPEAKER_01
80 bullet holes through the plane, killed a fellow on the ground, shot the leg nearly off the man.
3
SPEAKER_01
Where was this?
3
SPEAKER_01
In that little place of Pichilingi.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they were shooting you from the ground.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, a little 900-foot strip there at Peachy Linea, a poor, poor village with starving donkeys.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s where I d give them $17,000 for the load, and I d go over on the highway and load.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, on day 13, I did a load every day for 13 days.
3
SPEAKER_01
They had a bunch of marijuana pretty good piled up, and I was going to load a day.
3
SPEAKER_01
And on day 13, I had that little warning sign going off in my stomach, uh-oh, uh-oh, don t do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I asked this Joaquin, oh, we had the Federales paid off nowhere we were.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I spent the night in a hammock and walked down to the airplane just as it getting daylight, and 10 or 12 men walked with me, and Pedro got in.
3
SPEAKER_01
I brushed my teeth in the little stream.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was about a foot deep, a little river coming through there.
3
SPEAKER_01
He got in the airplane, and I fired her up.
3
SPEAKER_01
Bam, blah, blah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And bam, I thought a tire blew out.
3
SPEAKER_01
I looked over and see if it was
3
SPEAKER_01
And it still ain t dawned on me, and Pedro s yelling, please see ya, please see ya, Roger, please see ya!
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, it dawned on me, and I shoved it, the throttle to the firewall.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I only had- So that was a bullet.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, somebody, they was off to the sides, they d shot it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just a warning, like, get out, stop, we re going to rob you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Whatever it is, that s what they do.
4
SPEAKER_01
They had just taken the plane and me and put me in prison and the whole thing, but even though I had papers.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I just shoved it in a fireball, and there wasn t enough room to take off on that strip, and half of it was behind me, or some of it was behind me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so just at the end, I m just like, I think that thing stalls at about 50 miles an hour, just turning 50, and I just pulled it right up.
4
SPEAKER_01
and put the flaps on, and as I pulled off the ground, they opened up on both sides of me with machine guns, and they riddled that airplane.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the windshield came out.
4
SPEAKER_01
I got hit three times.
4
SPEAKER_01
You, like your body?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Where did you get hit?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I didn t know I was hit.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it was just the gasoline just pouring in.
4
SPEAKER_01
The world turned yellow.
4
SPEAKER_01
I must have went into shock.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it just stopped in slow motion.
4
SPEAKER_01
And one bullet hit the strut right by my head, and parts of that bullet just went all over me.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just looked like I d been peppered with lead.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the gasoline was just pouring in.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, just pouring in where they d shot the wing up above, and the windshield s gone.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it was just like a hailstorm.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I was in a stall anyway, and I didn t realize it, and I guess you wouldn t unless you trained for it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But when you re in a stall, the elevator is kind of flappy.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I didn t realize at the time, I thought they had shot the elevator cable in, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I thought, oh, God.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I just reached over and switched it off, switched it, pulled the mixture, pulled everything.
4
SPEAKER_01
And in the river, there was rocks about as big as this table, and they were like the turtle back, all the way up until there was a waterfall.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was quite a pretty place.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I crashed straight onto it, I thought, if I get those rocks.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when I did, the first time I hit, the wings came off, and then it bounced.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the next time, the nose came up and came under the plane.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m sitting there, I must have been knocked unconscious, because Pedro s shaking me, come on, Roger, come on, Roger.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I stepped out into the water, and here comes these four Federales still shooting at us.
4
SPEAKER_01
And a bully to two hit the airplane.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I kept a nine millimeter Browning high power taped to the top of the radio.
4
SPEAKER_01
in case I ever needed it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because you didn t want it in the airplane.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it was just handy.
4
SPEAKER_01
You just lay in there.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I took and popped a few caps out of them, and they ran into the rocks.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we took off running, and then I looked, and Pedro s foot nearly shot off.
4
SPEAKER_01
They d shot him on one side of the ankle, and it just blown out the other side.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it wasn t even hardly bleeding, the shock of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I took my T-shirt off and gripped it and tied it best I could.
4
SPEAKER_01
But you had still bullets in you, so you could still run.
4
SPEAKER_01
I shot the top of my toenail off.
4
SPEAKER_01
I shot it across my head and my kneecap.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I was just nicked.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was very painful later on, but right that time, it was just hot.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there s a bullet still in my foot from it, a piece of a bullet, a good-sized slug.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we went on up the mountain through the cactus.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just running.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just going, I want to go down.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, no, they ll fed her all as they go, the easy way.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s go.
4
SPEAKER_01
This young fellow.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we came to an old donkey.
4
SPEAKER_01
She must have been 30 years old, long and way back, long hair on her.
4
SPEAKER_01
Charlotte, Charlotte.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he petted the donkey, and we jumped on.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like an actual donkey?
4
SPEAKER_01
Donkey.
4
SPEAKER_01
There were donkeys all over the place.
4
SPEAKER_01
Anyhow, he knew that was from the village.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so we rode seven miles, two of us on a donkey with no bridle, no saddle, nothing.
4
SPEAKER_01
We came to a little man plowing a little horse and a little ox.
4
SPEAKER_01
Both of them spotted, and the yoke was across their back this way, and he s plowing with a little plow amongst stumps.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was like one of these people clearing a little piece of land, and he had a little house there.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so we went into his house, and his wife and his daughter, they put like cloth over my wounds and on Pedro s.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was terrible.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they poured diesel oil on it to keep the flies off.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m covered in diesel.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the man left, and he was gone all day.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then about dark, he showed up with about 15 or 20 horses, and mules showed up in the yard, walking fast.
4
SPEAKER_01
And a doctor got out.
4
SPEAKER_01
He said, I m Dr. Benjamin Soso with Red Cross.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he worked on my foot, and he worked on Pedro.
4
SPEAKER_01
He gave us a shot of morphine and tetanus shots.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he said, you ve got to get to hospital.
4
SPEAKER_01
He said, Pedro will die if he don t get to hospital.
4
SPEAKER_01
He said, they re looking for an American pilot that s been shot down.
4
SPEAKER_01
They think he s dead.
4
SPEAKER_01
There was a lot of blood in that airplane.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so they rode, I don t know how far we rode, but we rode miles.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we d come to a road, and there was a big truck.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was loaded with corn in the ear.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they dug holes in that corn and put us in it.
4
SPEAKER_01
and covered us up, and the road was rough, and every time we d hit a dirt road, that corn would cover me up, and they d scratch my face out again.
4
SPEAKER_01
When we came to the highway, we went into a house, and they got me some clothes, and mine was messed up, and a white basin, and they must have brought 20 jugs of water different times.
4
SPEAKER_01
I kept washing and washing my foot till all the blood and the crud got off of me, and put on those clothes.
4
SPEAKER_01
And somebody went to, they said, you can t go north of Rhodes Block, they re looking for the pilot, so you gotta go south.
4
SPEAKER_01
So they found a taxi in Mazatlan, and it was a rather new taxi, and the fellow would take me to Guadalajara, which was, I don t know, seven, eight hours south.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we got in that taxi and they propped me up with sheets and blankets and pillows in the back seat and gave me these great big white pain pills and I was quite content.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then I was shot down in Columbia also.
4
SPEAKER_01
Can you tell that story?
4
SPEAKER_01
I sure can.
4
SPEAKER_01
All right, I went down for a load of marijuana.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we got to the place, and we got there too early, and the guerrillas screamed, you got to get out of here, you got to get out of here.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so we went back to the place where we staged from and refueled.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had a beautiful DC-3, carried three tons.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so while I was waiting, I,
4
SPEAKER_01
I ate something for lunch, and I went around behind the house.
4
SPEAKER_01
We refueled the plane up.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had to wait until late in the afternoon.
4
SPEAKER_01
They wanted me to come just at dark so the military planes couldn t see me on their strip.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m laying in the hammock asleep, and I hear this terrible roar.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I look right up through the trees, and at the ass end of two military jets going straight up.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they do a dive over, and they came back down the strip in front of that airplane, and they just tear it up with .50 caliber machine guns.
4
SPEAKER_01
They just showing out.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I run for the airplane.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just give that guy $80,000, and he ran for the truck, and all the rest of them ran for the truck.
4
SPEAKER_01
I should have ran with my money.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I didn t.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ran for the airplane.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the co-pilot got in, and his name was Al.
4
SPEAKER_01
He got in with me, and two fellas got in the back.
4
SPEAKER_01
We had drums of fuel in there to refuel when we got down to the gorillas.
4
SPEAKER_01
So we took off, and I couldn t get the gear up because I d taken off in such a hurry, these pins in the struts of a DC-3, and with big flags on them, and you have to take them up so that the plane won t come up.
4
SPEAKER_01
So these jets swarmed on me, and they tried to get me to go.
4
SPEAKER_01
They kept telling me which way to go, and the pilot would be just as close as just right over there.
4
SPEAKER_01
I could see him.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just held up the old hippie piece.
4
SPEAKER_01
I didn t think they would shoot.
4
SPEAKER_01
I really didn t.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nobody had shot before.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I kept flying out, and I kept getting slower and slower, and they kept slowing down, down, down, and the black smoke rolling.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then they started shooting up under me, boom, boom, boom, boom, with them 20-millimeter cannons.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the tracers just going up, they looked like they re curving up from me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I, whoa, and I pushed the nose over so they couldn t get under me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And later on, I heard they thought I tried to ram them.
4
SPEAKER_01
So one of them went for fuel, and I kept on going.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the one just tore the left wing tip up with a .50 caliber.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then he come back again and shot the tail up.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s warning me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I tell the fellow in there, I says, you know, if you bring me enough water, I believe I can fly this thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
My mouth got quite dry.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I went on, and I landed on a big pasture.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was huge pasture, and it was rougher than it looked, and the wings just flapped.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I come to a stop and jumped out and pulled those tabs out and threw them on the ground so I could get my gear up.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I understand that during the 1980 World Series baseball game that it says, American DC-3 has just been shot down by American jets, by Colombian jets.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s the first plane shot down on Reagan s new war on drugs.
4
SPEAKER_01
But he s up.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s up and away, ladies and gentlemen.
4
SPEAKER_01
We keep you posted.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I took off again, and I went into a thunderstorm.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they came close to the mountains.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I spiraled up.
4
SPEAKER_01
And every time I d come out, that jet was there, boom, boom, boom.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I dove back into that storm.
4
SPEAKER_01
Boom, boom, boom in there.
4
SPEAKER_01
And at 20,000 feet, I started icing up.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I went out one last time, and he was right there waiting.
4
SPEAKER_01
He had me on radar.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I went back in, and I kicked it over and put it into a spin and went straight down to 2,000 feet.
4
SPEAKER_01
come out under it, and I was flying along the Guaviera River.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was 20 feet above the water.
4
SPEAKER_01
It looked like a pasture.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was just grass.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I made several runs to tear the grass down, and it felt hard.
4
SPEAKER_01
That old DC-3 weighs 30,000 pounds.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I put it down on the fifth run.
4
SPEAKER_01
I said, all right, Al, we re going to land now.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you flew like close several times?
4
SPEAKER_00
No, I put the wheels down.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you put the wheels down without landing?
4
SPEAKER_00
About half a mile and just, so I m making me a runway, you know?
4
SPEAKER_00
So you, okay, so you re being tracked by a jet.
4
SPEAKER_00
He s trying to, well, before that, I m just retelling this story how insane it is.
4
SPEAKER_00
So he s trying to shoot you down, and there s a thunderstorm that you re escaping into, and then you do a spin down to, what, 2,000 feet, whatever you said.
4
SPEAKER_00
like somehow escaping all of this, and then you try to land on a pasture on a giant heavy plane that carries three tons.
4
SPEAKER_00
by touching down five or six times to make a landing strip for yourself.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the grass is three or four feet high.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it looked really good after a few times.
4
SPEAKER_01
So then just before it stopped, I said, Al, take your feet off the brakes.
4
SPEAKER_01
He said, I don t have my feet on the brakes.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I knew I had broken through the crust and I put full power on, but it didn t.
4
SPEAKER_01
That old big plane just come on down and it just did a head,
4
SPEAKER_01
As it came to a stop, it did a headstand, 90 degrees to the ground, and the engines held it up, and the nose and all just crushed in right on it.
4
SPEAKER_01
We fell between the two seats to keep from getting killed.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when it come to a stop, all that fuel was pouring out on those hot engines, and there s an escape hatch at the top.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just stepped out, took my suitcase with me.
4
SPEAKER_01
Was there fire?
4
SPEAKER_01
No fire.
4
SPEAKER_01
They left the plane there and the two guys that was in the back one of them broke his thumb and it was with the barrels and they had to put a hoses, tie gas hoses together to shimmy down to get out.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
So... That s an incredible story.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, let me just tell you, it had a little bit more to it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I learned to fly with the idea of being a missionary aviation fellowship pilot.
4
SPEAKER_01
Fly the missionaries in and out of the jungle.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I went 11 days through that jungle.
4
SPEAKER_01
The rest of them went on down the road and went to prison.
4
SPEAKER_01
I said, I ll crawl on my belly six months in a year, eating snakes before I m going down the road.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I went in there, and I was 11 days in the jungle.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I finally came to a place, and it had airplanes.
4
SPEAKER_01
I kept asking the Indians, don t they still have avions?
4
SPEAKER_01
I want to steal an airplane and get out of there.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when I came to the place, I asked, what is this place?
4
SPEAKER_01
Lovely place.
4
SPEAKER_01
It looked like Honolulu in World War II.
4
SPEAKER_01
There was a runway there.
4
SPEAKER_01
They said, you don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is Loma Linda headquarters for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon.
4
SPEAKER_01
and they flew me out.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
You escaped from prison five times.
4
SPEAKER_00
So what stands out to you as the most difficult or miraculous escape in the bunch?
4
SPEAKER_01
The most black miraculous was when I was in the courtroom in Spain.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think I was on the third floor of Real High, and I ran across the courtroom, handcuffed, kicked the window out.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I looked down, and it was above the palm trees.
4
SPEAKER_01
I thought there might be a power line or something I could grab on as I went down.
4
SPEAKER_01
There was nothing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there was a car parked.
4
SPEAKER_01
a station wagon on the... He just jumped out?
4
SPEAKER_01
I jumped out from 31 feet and on top of that car, and it exploded in the street.
4
SPEAKER_01
The windshield went over three or four cars.
4
SPEAKER_01
It looked like snow going up, and I looked like Donald Duck with the thing coming out.
4
SPEAKER_01
In handcuffs, and I got out.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you just kept running?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I kept running.
4
SPEAKER_01
They ran me down and hit me in the back.
4
SPEAKER_01
I still got a dead spot in my back where the policeman hit me with a shotgun.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they brought me back.
4
SPEAKER_01
Mari was there.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were saying, your husband is crazy.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was spectacular.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I escaped from Lübeck, maximum security prison.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I cut out of there and got out.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was a miraculous escape.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that was where?
4
SPEAKER_01
In Lübeck, Germany.
4
SPEAKER_01
What was that escape like?
4
SPEAKER_01
I was there and there was going to extradite me back to the United States where I still had all these charges and 25 years special parole.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was cleaning the,
4
SPEAKER_01
lawyers  visiting room.
4
SPEAKER_01
And on it was bars that looked like piano notes or this way to make it pretty, but there was a little bit
4
SPEAKER_01
So I got a rope from a guy where they made boats in there, and I had 20 minutes.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I went in there, and I wrapped it around, and I put a broom handle in it that was cut off and wrapped it around until they pulled the bars together on that side, and then I pulled them together on the other side.
4
SPEAKER_01
But that only put me inside the prison yard where the soccer equipment was kept.
4
SPEAKER_01
But they were putting new windows on one side of the prison, and they had it scaffolded up to the fourth floor.
4
SPEAKER_01
So there was a little recess there, and there was guard towers every 100 feet or so.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, they would shoot and kill you.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I got behind that.
4
SPEAKER_01
and climbed up, holding to the bricks on one hand and the scaffolding on the other, and went to the roof.
4
SPEAKER_01
I lost my shirt and most of my clothes going through the window.
4
SPEAKER_01
I got all the skin off of me.
4
SPEAKER_01
I thought I was going to die, and I was trying to go sideways like this, and finally I got a grip, and the bars let me through and took all the skin off of me.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I got up on that roof, and I have asthma, and I just lay there trying to catch my breath.
4
SPEAKER_01
Didn t bring my inhaler.
4
SPEAKER_01
With blood everywhere.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, with blood, yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I got down to the end, and on the end, the reason I did it, they were putting a new wall around the prison to make it larger.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they had taken all the wire off above the sally port where they could join the two walls together, and I saw that when I came up.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there was a guard, a half of a
4
SPEAKER_01
like a dome sticking out of that brick building where there s a guard there with a gun, and he d kill you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, he was made, he was surely trained to kill you.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we had some bad people in that place.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I lay up one floor above it, and I saw a guard and his wife come with a double umbrella, and it was just pouring down the rain.
4
SPEAKER_01
Here I am without a shirt on, bloody.
4
SPEAKER_01
She had a little boy with him under that double umbrella, and I knew him, and when he come, and she started back from the sally port, I hit the top of that guard tower, bam, with both feet, and I jumped, I guess, it s three more floors.
4
SPEAKER_01
I jumped, there was a pile of sand, like a cone where they were digging it there, and I hit that, and my feet buried up to the knees, but I didn t fall.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I ran straight towards her so he couldn t shoot me, and then I went around some bushes and went downhill.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I heard, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam behind me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I looked and that fool woman was in a big old car and she was knocking down the parking meters behind me.
4
SPEAKER_01
She was trying to run over me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I ran behind the car and she tore the fender off of her car.
4
SPEAKER_01
trying and yelling, yapping, a terrible evil-looking face at me, screaming at me, and the sirens going off in the prison.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there was a fence there, a wall, and I jumped up on it to jump over, and it had glass embedded.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I cut my hands and my arms all up getting over that, and I hit the ground on the other side.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was that muck where some farmer had dug it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I dug in there and Mario had slipped me $200 into prison and I had that in my shoe and I lost my shoes in that muck.
4
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, I got out of there and got to Holland.
4
SPEAKER_01
Really heck of a story how I did that.
4
SPEAKER_00
What was prison like, whether it s Germany or whether it s Australia?
4
SPEAKER_00
What were some of the darker moments in prison?
4
SPEAKER_01
The United States prisons are awful, awful, evil places now.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just really, there s nothing nice about them.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s the guards.
4
SPEAKER_01
In L.A.?
4
SPEAKER_01
In every one I went to.
4
SPEAKER_01
It seemed like the further east.
4
SPEAKER_01
I went to Oklahoma and it was nicer.
4
SPEAKER_01
But all of them on the West Coast, there was hatred there.
4
SPEAKER_01
and they got really stupid people hired, just incredibly.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, hatred by the guards.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the inmates.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, I speak Spanish and I walked into the Spanish TV room and it would send you a no, you can t come in here.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I walked across to the black, hey, get out of here.
4
SPEAKER_01
White boy, it was just like, what?
4
SPEAKER_01
Man, I like all you people, you know?
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I walked down to the white people and said, show us your paperwork.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t come in here until you show your paperwork.
4
SPEAKER_01
We don t let snitches and homosexuals and all this sort of stuff in here.
4
SPEAKER_01
So they have, so it s just like, man, I don t want to be in here.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it sounds absurd, but you re saying like the basic humanity is gone.
4
SPEAKER_01
Completely, completely.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the guards, it was just like, come here, Reeves.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I woke up to him, get the fuck out of my face.
4
SPEAKER_01
He sticks his chin out, like for me to break his jaw.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, what in the world, man?
4
SPEAKER_01
I love people.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you got this joy to you.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have a joyful nature.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it didn t seem like that broke you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Not a bit.
4
SPEAKER_00
How did you persevere?
4
SPEAKER_01
Did you know I didn t even think I persevered, but I try to enjoy my life wherever I am every day.
4
SPEAKER_01
I do.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ran every day.
4
SPEAKER_01
And like I told you, why do you run so, Roger?
4
SPEAKER_01
I said, to help me suffer these fools.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I played a game of chess every day almost of my life in there.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I read two books a week.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I talked with people, storytellers, guys would come in and, tell us another story, Roger.
4
SPEAKER_01
Give us a poem.
4
SPEAKER_01
Tell us one you never told us before.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so it was just nice.
5
SPEAKER_02
Aboriginal boys, they picked their country music and it was all right.
5
SPEAKER_01
Red, Morgan Freeman s character in The Shawshank Redemption, says the following, these walls are funny.
5
SPEAKER_01
First you hate them, then you get used to them, enough time passes you get so you depend on them.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s institutionalized.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is there truth to that?
5
100%.
5
SPEAKER_01
I didn t even see the walls, except whenever I was planning on escaping.
5
SPEAKER_01
In Shawshank Redemption, he spent so many years in prison that he almost didn t know what to do with himself once he left, once he was a free man.
5
SPEAKER_01
You get so used to the system, the rituals, having to follow orders,
5
SPEAKER_01
even being treated poorly, all those kinds of things that you become dependent on.
5
SPEAKER_02
Well, down in Australia, I spent the first a little over a year in the shoe.
5
SPEAKER_02
It was like, did you see the movie, The Silence of the Lambs?
5
SPEAKER_02
Thank you, Marty.
5
SPEAKER_02
And he s there, and I had five or six guards looking at me with a one-way mirror.
5
SPEAKER_02
And that s whenever I thought I might never get out, I got a life sentence.
5
SPEAKER_02
I had all this time waiting here in Germany.
5
SPEAKER_02
And so, they had a computer in there, but it didn t have a program on it.
5
SPEAKER_02
And I wrote, so I just started writing these little stories, that s what I did in my life.
5
SPEAKER_02
And I wrote one line, and I wrote over a million words.
5
SPEAKER_02
with them looking at me.
5
SPEAKER_02
So it was after a year they let me out.
5
SPEAKER_02
It wasn t long before they put me in a place called self-care.
5
SPEAKER_02
Particularly, I was in what they call the lifers pod.
5
SPEAKER_02
There were 268 men in self-care there.
5
SPEAKER_02
It was unbelievably good that we were left alone.
5
SPEAKER_02
Basically, the guards were certainly there, but they had their shack, and we had apartments, four apartments to the building, and six men to the unit with your own door and a key to it, and a kitchen, dining room.
5
SPEAKER_02
freezer, refrigerator, and they allowed you $360 a week to buy groceries.
5
SPEAKER_02
And I cooked for about 16 years, and I learned to cook good.
5
SPEAKER_02
And other people have their specialties, and
5
SPEAKER_02
So that was quite, it wasn t so like being in prison.
5
SPEAKER_02
It was somewhat living with me, and it was difficult, man.
5
SPEAKER_02
I had some good fights and carry on, but you don t get along with everybody.
5
SPEAKER_02
But then whenever I came back to the United States, I was laughing and talking, and when I got off the plane,
5
SPEAKER_02
L.A.
5
SPEAKER_02
I had three marshals with me from Australia.
5
SPEAKER_02
I was slammed upside the wall, I mean hard, put my ankle waxed on and handcuffed so tight until they cut my leg off.
5
SPEAKER_02
Face forward, face forward, hands apart.
5
SPEAKER_02
Good gracious.
5
SPEAKER_02
And walked me 50 steps and turned me over to the marshals and they took part of that off.
5
SPEAKER_02
That was a border patrol that was there over my marijuana charge from 1977.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
I did 11 years for parole violation.
5
SPEAKER_02
Now they want me for more violation.
5
SPEAKER_02
And they put me in, down in Los Angeles, they put me in, the marshals put me in there, and they put me in isolation.
5
SPEAKER_02
I thought, what in the world they got me for isolation for?
5
SPEAKER_02
I done anything.
5
SPEAKER_01
How long did you spend in isolation?
5
SPEAKER_02
more than six months.
5
SPEAKER_02
So I, after three or four days, the little Judas window slide open, and a man, a nice looking man in a suit come there.
5
SPEAKER_02
Hello, Reeves.
5
SPEAKER_02
I just want to see what you look like.
5
SPEAKER_02
I saw your National Geographic documentary, and it does me pleasure to keep you in isolation.
5
SPEAKER_02
And he slammed the thing, and I couldn t get out of there.
5
SPEAKER_02
And by law, the U.S.
5
SPEAKER_02
Parole Commission is supposed to give you a hearing within 90 days.
5
SPEAKER_02
So Murray paid a lawyer $7,500, and he never picked up the phone.
5
SPEAKER_02
Somebody got to him.
5
SPEAKER_02
Who s that somebody, you think?
5
SPEAKER_02
Christopher Cannon was his name, and I don t know who got to him, but he didn t do anything to get me out of there.
5
SPEAKER_02
I got one 15-minute phone call a month, and I couldn t get out.
5
SPEAKER_02
So then after six months, they shipped me to, put me on Con Air, double shackled and black box on my hands.
5
SPEAKER_02
And I went to Oklahoma, and they let me out on the floor.
5
SPEAKER_02
I couldn t imagine, then I could call after a couple of days.
5
SPEAKER_02
And they said, there was a man here from Washington give you a parole here, and you only got here at 3.30.
5
SPEAKER_02
So he left, he said he d be back next year.
5
What?
5
SPEAKER_02
I ve been in now over six months.
5
SPEAKER_02
So then there was a lovely little lady, she was a case manager or something.
5
SPEAKER_02
She said, you can ask for parole on the record.
5
SPEAKER_02
And I said, please do.
5
SPEAKER_02
So I sent them an email, and the next day I got my parole.
5
SPEAKER_02
90 days later, they sent me to Terminal Island and put me in the place there with the infilade, I guess, since I m as old as I am, 78 years old.
5
SPEAKER_02
So they put me into people in there dying, and wheelchairs, and legs off, and arms off, and cancer.
5
SPEAKER_02
So I was in there, and I pushed the fellas around.
5
SPEAKER_02
I come out of the chow hall there, and I went to go to the right to get me a haircut, and two Mexican guys there, a lieutenant and another one, went between us, and he went like the boop, boop, boop, and I said, I could outrun you.
5
SPEAKER_02
And they slammed me, put me on the ground, handcuffed me, and put me in the shoe for a week.
5
SPEAKER_02
I got out, and man, they put me back in the place.
5
SPEAKER_02
They treated me rough.
5
SPEAKER_02
I got in a little more trouble and they put me back in the shoe and I wouldn t come out.
5
SPEAKER_02
They had that, the virus was out killing people.
5
SPEAKER_02
So they killed eight people in that unit I was in.
5
SPEAKER_02
So I mean, I wouldn t even come out to take a shower.
5
SPEAKER_02
I had a little straw that I put in the sink and I d take a sock that I had and scrub myself with it with some soap and glass of water over my head and then clean the floor up and put it in the toilet.
5
SPEAKER_01
So that was your time during the coronavirus pandemic.
5
SPEAKER_02
I got out last April, right in the middle of it, and they were dying bad in there.
5
SPEAKER_02
So I was treated worse for that last year in America than I was for the whole 20 years in Australia, the 18 years in Australia.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then you were a free man at the end of that year.
5
SPEAKER_02
They put me out and sent me home, and the parole officers couldn t even come.
5
SPEAKER_02
They weren t working.
5
SPEAKER_02
They were just doing everything by video.
5
SPEAKER_02
Said, better not have a drink.
5
SPEAKER_02
The only thing was I couldn t even have a drink of wine.
5
SPEAKER_02
So after a year, I had to take psychiatric treatment every week.
5
SPEAKER_02
I had to go talk to the psychiatrist, psychologist.
5
SPEAKER_02
And me and her got along great.
5
SPEAKER_02
She was a good Christian woman.
5
SPEAKER_02
We just chatted and talked.
5
SPEAKER_02
And I think they said, so I had to pee in the bottle every week.
5
SPEAKER_02
I said, I ve been in 33 years.
5
SPEAKER_02
How many piss deaths do you think I ve had?
5
SPEAKER_02
I ve never been dirty.
5
SPEAKER_02
Only thing if y all want a clean one, you come get me.
5
SPEAKER_01
Before I talk to you about love, let me ask you a difficult question.
5
SPEAKER_01
You write in your book, I don t consider myself much of a criminal.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t lie, cheat, or steal, and I always take up for the underdog.
5
SPEAKER_01
Violence makes me sick.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yet, I know I m an outlaw and those that break the law must be punished.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think many people listening to this, or some people listening to this, will see you as a criminal, as a bad man, who increased the amount of suffering in this world.
5
SPEAKER_01
What do you have to say to them?
5
SPEAKER_02
I would like to tell them that they have been indoctrinated by the spin
5
SPEAKER_02
of news and politicians, and they don t know the truth of the situation.
5
SPEAKER_02
You lay the truth out there in an envelope and let me open it, besides something else that is false, and it s staggering.
5
SPEAKER_02
The truth is that I was a tobacco farmer, and tobacco kills 500,000 people a year in America, and six million have debilitating diseases because of it.
5
SPEAKER_02
Drugs, all drugs combined kill between 10 and 15,000 people a year by overdose, and 60% of those are pharmaceutical.
5
SPEAKER_02
Now then, when I was a tobacco farmer, come sit on the front pew, Mr. Reeves, come on up here, you a gentleman.
5
SPEAKER_02
You just joined the Masonic Lodge, and you joined our church, and you just come on and sit down with the good people.
5
SPEAKER_02
You grow two marijuana plants, get out of here, you scumbag.
5
SPEAKER_02
And the marijuana doesn t hurt anybody.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s just, that s the truth of it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so in your career, you walked amidst violence, but you never participated in the violence.
5
SPEAKER_02
I didn t even see it.
5
SPEAKER_02
just didn t happen around me.
5
SPEAKER_02
In prison it did.
5
SPEAKER_02
I sewed people up.
5
SPEAKER_02
They called me Doc.
5
SPEAKER_02
I had dental floss.
5
SPEAKER_02
One time I had to get a blade and try to help keep them from my patient, from getting again.
5
SPEAKER_02
But I was just, like if I shot at those people, I shot at them to keep them from killing me.
5
SPEAKER_02
I certainly didn t mean to kill them.
5
SPEAKER_02
So that s just—some people are evil, and they will kill you and hurt you and lie to you.
5
SPEAKER_02
I just don t do any of that.
5
SPEAKER_02
It just makes you sick.
5
SPEAKER_02
I ve seen it.
5
SPEAKER_02
When I was in the SHU, three guys tried to kill a guy, and they stabbed him so many times, but their stab went breaking, and the blood getting out of the room.
5
SPEAKER_02
I said, you re going to kill him.
5
SPEAKER_02
You re going to kill him and save his life.
5
SPEAKER_02
Drug him up there where the guards could see him.
5
SPEAKER_02
There s stuff like that.
5
SPEAKER_02
I m just not of that nature of those people.
5
SPEAKER_02
They re just evil.
5
SPEAKER_02
They re people born evil, I believe.
5
SPEAKER_01
It is heartbreaking to hear that the basic humanity is gone in prison in the United States.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s heartbreaking, because that basic humanity is actually the light at the end of the tunnel.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s the thing that saves us, as opposed to when it s absent, it s the thing that destroys us.
5
SPEAKER_02
The prisons are filled, absolutely filled with people that have some mental problems.
5
SPEAKER_02
Now, you see tent city all the way up and down here.
5
SPEAKER_02
I guarantee you every one of those people have mental problems to some degree, however little it is, but they re a little bit off.
5
SPEAKER_02
Now, then you get a DEA agent that wants to make a name for himself.
5
SPEAKER_02
He goes down there and gets two of them, one of them to sell a little two grams of methamphetamine to the other one, and he gets a conviction.
5
SPEAKER_02
And a young prosecutor, he gets a conviction.
5
SPEAKER_02
He wants to make a judge.
5
SPEAKER_02
And we got to judging.
5
SPEAKER_02
Where was it?
5
SPEAKER_02
I m going to give a million—what was his name?
5
SPEAKER_02
Gilbert.
5
SPEAKER_02
I m going to give men a million years before I get off the judge.
5
SPEAKER_02
You get fools like that in charge, you re going to fill prisons up with pitiful humanity.
5
SPEAKER_02
And those are the ones.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then the other is people over drugs.
5
SPEAKER_02
And drugs should be a health issue.
5
SPEAKER_02
You cannot
5
SPEAKER_02
police it enough.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s just they know that the only thing that overdoses is opioids, the heroin.
5
SPEAKER_02
And if they can give it to them, it costs about a dollar a day to give the worst addict his fix.
5
SPEAKER_02
But they ll give it methadone, which is from a pharmaceutical company, which is just as bad.
5
SPEAKER_02
Why in the world?
5
SPEAKER_02
We tried it all over the world, in Portugal, in England, and when they give the girls clean up, no more stolen cars.
5
SPEAKER_02
Why?
5
SPEAKER_02
Who wants to keep this farce going?
5
SPEAKER_02
They re just perpetuating it like, oh, every little police place is getting all these suits and armor and machine guns.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s just like, oh, it s such a spin.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s sad.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you think all drugs should be legalized?
5
SPEAKER_02
I don t know about that, but they certainly should be controlled.
5
SPEAKER_02
If a person is an addict, he should be able to go down and get his fix with somebody there to help him with a clean needle and a glass of orange juice.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s so much cheaper than prison.
5
SPEAKER_02
It s so much cheaper than him stealing cars or prostitute having to go to work.
5
SPEAKER_02
That s sad.
5
SPEAKER_01
You ve lived one heck of a life.
5
SPEAKER_01
Looking back, there s a lot of young people that listen to this, high school, college students.
5
SPEAKER_01
What advice would you give them how to live, how to have a successful career, how to have a good life, how to be a good man or woman?
5
SPEAKER_02
To be a good man or woman, if I had it to do over with, I ll just tell you what I d have done.
5
SPEAKER_02
I would have paid attention and studied my lesson.
5
SPEAKER_02
and did the best I could.
5
SPEAKER_02
In school?
5
SPEAKER_02
In school, yes, and went as far as I could have.
5
SPEAKER_02
I would have liked to have been a doctor.
5
SPEAKER_02
I just didn t have the stickability or anybody to tell me, hey, go over there and do that.
5
SPEAKER_02
And if you can do that at a very young age, start in a trade, learn to do something.
5
SPEAKER_02
It doesn t matter what it is.
5
SPEAKER_02
If you learn to do something good, there is a great demand for you.
5
SPEAKER_02
And I would say that in prison,
5
SPEAKER_02
The prison system should come in and you get a thief, young fans of thief, a robber.
5
SPEAKER_02
And you say, all right, we need carpenters, we need plumbers, we need electricians, we need sheep.
5
SPEAKER_02
Sentence them to that trade.
5
SPEAKER_02
And when you get an A plus in that, where you can go out and make you $30 or $50 an hour, you go home.
5
SPEAKER_02
Now, you can mess around 10 years if you want to, or you can do this in two.
5
SPEAKER_02
I think that would, that s just for the prism.
5
SPEAKER_02
But anyway, I would say that they find somebody and be true to them, that we have, just be honest and true in your life.
5
SPEAKER_02
You mean like relationships, friendships?
5
SPEAKER_02
Relationships, yes.
5
SPEAKER_02
I mean, so many, so many people, particularly our children, are from relationships where
5
SPEAKER_02
They re not wanted.
5
SPEAKER_02
They re divorced.
5
SPEAKER_02
Their father s left.
5
SPEAKER_02
They don t know who their daddy is.
5
SPEAKER_02
They re distant foster homes.
5
SPEAKER_02
500,000 children are in foster homes in America today.
5
SPEAKER_02
And our government inadvertently isn t encouraging those people.
5
SPEAKER_02
My daughter is a doctor, and she delivered a couple of years ago a baby from a 10-year-old child.
5
SPEAKER_02
that child, and she said, in the visiting room is four generations, all of them on welfare.
5
SPEAKER_02
Now we got one more, and it reminds me of Elvis Presley s song, In the Ghetto.
5
SPEAKER_01
learn a trade, become a craftsman of sorts, and find somebody to love and who loves you.
5
SPEAKER_02
That s right, and have a family, and stick with it.
5
SPEAKER_02
Surely, you re gonna get angry, you re gonna get disappointed, you re gonna get all kinds of stuff, but come back and make up before you go to sleep.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, I did half of those things.
5
SPEAKER_01
I got the first one, I m working on the second one, so I appreciate the advice.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, Mari, thank you so much for joining us.
5
SPEAKER_01
Can you tell me the story of how you two met?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, my parents every summer would go to the lake in Canada, and the place was called Turkey Point, which is on Lake Erie, and just have a nice summer holiday there, water skiing, swimming, you know, sunbathing.
5
SPEAKER_00
This was back in the 60s.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I was sitting on the pier with a few girlfriends and telling them my story, you know, and then all of a sudden I looked up
5
SPEAKER_00
And I saw this figure in the distance coming onto the pier.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, we re all dressed in bathing suits and swimwear.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re swimming and this, that, and the other.
5
SPEAKER_00
And here he comes, dark trousers.
5
SPEAKER_00
In fact, they were black.
5
SPEAKER_00
White shirt.
5
SPEAKER_00
and a tie and a straw kind of a Panama hat.
5
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, so he was very, he stood out.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so I invited him to come and sit down.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so he continued to talk and we just talked and talked and talked and then later moved to the beach.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think the next time I saw him, he was talking to another girl and I thought, yeah,
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, man, I know.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, next.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, about six months later, I receive a letter.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s a letter from Roger.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then we start this lovely correspondence, and we just start writing.
5
SPEAKER_00
In those days, you just wrote everything.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then the next summer, he was coming up again.
5
SPEAKER_00
He was on his way to Alaska.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he says, I would like to come by and see you.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I said, well, I ll be in the same place that I met you last year.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so when he came up this time, for some reason, Roger reached for my hand and I reached for his, and man, that was it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was like love at first touch.
5
SPEAKER_01
That was love.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was just like a silence, you know, and oh my gosh.
5
SPEAKER_00
we didn t even look at each other, it was just, oh my goodness, what happened here?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I was the type of person, I never wanted to get married, way, way, way down the road, never have any children, and I wanted to see the world first, and then do all that, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
But that was it, that was love, and you ve been together ever since.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
The thing is about the love that the two of you have for each other is they had to persevere through quite a heck of a journey.
5
SPEAKER_01
So how did Roger s drug smuggling change the nature of your love and your relationship?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, Lex, that remained steadfast.
5
SPEAKER_00
It endured.
5
SPEAKER_00
And since Roger s been home, I think we ve rekindled the love that we had when we first met.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I think my faith
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, my faith, my steadfast faith, and also the fact that Roger and I communicated.
5
SPEAKER_00
We wrote letters, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
He never complained.
5
SPEAKER_00
I know there were the children there.
5
SPEAKER_00
He never had mistreated me.
5
SPEAKER_00
I love this guy.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we had a lot of experiences.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was just, even though I- He s good looking, charismatic.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s pretty, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he was adventurous, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m sure of that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Would you say that again?
6
SPEAKER_00
just, I know, I, you know, I missed him physically, but he was just, we were just so strong in spirit, you know, and we could talk to one another.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yep.
6
SPEAKER_02
What was it like, Roger, when you re a free man?
6
SPEAKER_02
seeing Mari for the first time in person again.
6
SPEAKER_03
I cried for three days.
6
SPEAKER_03
Everything, I d look at a picture of her.
6
SPEAKER_03
I came home and there she prepared a meal for me.
6
SPEAKER_03
And it was the old oak table that I d
6
SPEAKER_03
redone, and the chairs, the same one, and the green placemats, and the same china that we had, and the same silverware.
6
SPEAKER_03
All of it just brought back the same paintings on the wall.
6
SPEAKER_03
It was just unbelievable.
6
SPEAKER_03
After 35 years,
6
SPEAKER_03
She had all my clothes cleaned, and my shoes shining, and I put the shoes on, and I walked out on the strings, and the soles came off.
6
SPEAKER_03
But the shirts and all fit perfect, everything, so it was just wonderful.
6
SPEAKER_03
And just to see her, and then just to think about, see her picture of her 50th birthday, or her 60th birthday, or her 70th birthday, I wasn t there.
6
SPEAKER_03
And the picture of her and with the children, it just, it was heartbreaking.
6
SPEAKER_03
And about the third day, I thought, man up, fella.
6
SPEAKER_03
You ve got to.
6
SPEAKER_03
So I got over it and quit the tears.
6
SPEAKER_03
Everything was just pulsating with life.
6
SPEAKER_03
It was just unbelievable to get out of that place.
6
SPEAKER_03
It really was.
6
SPEAKER_02
Do you regret the drug smuggling that took you away from the woman you love?
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yes.
6
SPEAKER_02
A hundred percent.
6
SPEAKER_03
No, I wouldn t have done it again if you don t think you re going to get caught.
6
SPEAKER_03
And it s just, no, it s just I did it for money and I had everything in the world I wanted before I did that.
6
SPEAKER_02
So the adventure
6
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it was one heck of an adventure for the two of you, for the both of you.
6
SPEAKER_02
Were you able to enjoy it, or was it always danger?
6
SPEAKER_02
Was it always something that threatened your relationship, your love, your family?
6
SPEAKER_02
Or were you able to enjoy the adventure of it?
6
SPEAKER_02
You know, we all die.
6
SPEAKER_02
Life is short.
6
SPEAKER_02
And to live that kind of adventure.
6
SPEAKER_03
Well, whenever I did the first loot, I got $10,000.
6
SPEAKER_03
And that was just about two years  pay on the fire department take-home.
6
SPEAKER_03
And I brought that home.
6
SPEAKER_00
I put my hand over my mouth.
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, Roger, I can t believe this.
6
SPEAKER_03
Oh my, what in the world?
6
SPEAKER_00
And Roger said, let s go have dinner.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so we went to the little restaurant that we would go to, you know.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he said, don t you dare look on the right-hand side of the menu.
6
SPEAKER_00
He said, just order anything you want.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it was just, as we were in the restaurant, you know, it was just, we were giddy about it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was giddy about it.
6
SPEAKER_02
Were you afraid that, I mean, did you think about the fact that it s illegal and Roger could end up in prison?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yes.
6
SPEAKER_02
Did you guys talk about it?
6
SPEAKER_03
Well, I just, I kind of thought I was bulletproof.
6
SPEAKER_03
I mean, they didn t catch you.
6
SPEAKER_03
I thought if they didn t catch you, you was all right.
6
SPEAKER_03
And it was hard to catch you in the air.
6
SPEAKER_03
So you never thought it was hard to catch you in the air?
6
SPEAKER_03
I didn t know that if your friend told on you five years later, you d still go to prison.
6
SPEAKER_03
That was a problem.
6
SPEAKER_02
I didn t know that.
6
SPEAKER_02
Did you guys ever talk about walking away?
6
SPEAKER_00
I asked Roger to walk away, and he says, I can t, Mario, just now, you know.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then, of course, the amount of people that he began to support, the family and the gifts.
6
SPEAKER_00
The deals.
6
SPEAKER_00
The deals, yes, the deals.
6
SPEAKER_03
Big ones.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and then you always wanted to do, what do you do with the money?
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, so you want to, I guess you,
6
SPEAKER_00
clean it up or you want to invest in an enterprise or in a business.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, it just doesn t work.
6
SPEAKER_00
They know the source of it and they take it and run.
6
SPEAKER_03
Every one of them.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
But he was very generous, extremely generous and benevolent.
6
SPEAKER_03
And when I started, I would ask about it.
6
SPEAKER_03
I went to a lawyer and a good number of people in California at that time wanted to legalize marijuana.
6
SPEAKER_03
back in 1973.
6
SPEAKER_03
And I went to a lawyer and I says, Mr. Lawyer, I put $100 on the table.
6
SPEAKER_03
What would they do if I caught me bringing marijuana across the border?
6
SPEAKER_03
He said, if you have a criminal record.
6
SPEAKER_03
I said, no, I ve never had a speeding ticket.
6
SPEAKER_03
Nothing, not even a traffic ticket.
6
SPEAKER_03
He said, you work for the fire department out there in Los Angeles?
6
SPEAKER_03
I said, yes, sir.
6
SPEAKER_03
He said, you ll get probation.
6
SPEAKER_03
The worst you ll do is you ll get
6
SPEAKER_03
one year, and you spend four months raking leaves on a military base.
6
SPEAKER_03
So my mother and my father died some years before, and my mother and baby sister came out, and I took them down to Disneyland.
6
SPEAKER_03
And she said, what you doing, boy?
6
SPEAKER_03
I said, I m hauling pot, Ma.
6
SPEAKER_03
She said, how much you making?
6
SPEAKER_03
I said, making $40,000 any day I want to go.
6
SPEAKER_03
And she said, what do they do if they catch you?
6
SPEAKER_03
And I told her what the lawyer said.
6
SPEAKER_03
Four months at the most, raking leaves.
6
SPEAKER_03
I said, what do you think?
6
SPEAKER_03
She said, do you need a co-pilot, son?
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, money is money, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_02
So your relationship persevered through some big challenges.
6
SPEAKER_02
Is there advice you can give about what makes for a successful relationship?
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Oh, well, you know, I think the initial igniting, meeting someone, you know, that s the love.
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That s it.
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And that little fire just keeps burning and burning and burning.
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You can t put it out, no matter what.
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It s the love fire.
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but it gets difficult.
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It does.
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It s funny, the love fire.
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So you re saying the love fire s all it takes to persevere through the difficulty.
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Well, no.
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Well, that s a huge part of it.
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And also, I contribute my individual situation to, in order to endure the prison years, is my faith.
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Faith in God?
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Yes.
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And friends who were unconditionally still loved me no matter what.
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Yes.
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So you had love around you in general.
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I did.
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And my children.
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They, you know, and that was a real purpose to guide them and to love them and to help them become citizens.
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What about you, Roger?
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What advice would you give?
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I just don t know how to do it.
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But I do know that you have to work on a relationship.
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Laurie and I have had problems.
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I mean, we get really... You guys get in fights?
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Oh, yeah.
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Oh, yes.
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Pretty regular.
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But they don t let them last long, you know.
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But certainly, you re so different.
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We re the same and yet we re so different.
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Yeah.
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Like little stuff?
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Little stuff, yes.
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And it might be big, but I usually win her over, you know.
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But anyhow, I just feel like Mario was always there.
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It was like she was my anchor.
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I was coming home.
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I was always coming home to her and the children.
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And you can see throughout my life, I m working on getting there.
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Are you afraid for his life, by the way?
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Oh, yes.
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Oh, yeah.
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There are times.
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Yeah.
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But, you know, I had faith in him.
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He was an excellent pilot.
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For example, I always said, Roger, if the ship s going down, I m jumping in the lifeboat with you because I know we re going to get to shore.
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You will save us.
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And so I had that faith in him.
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I mean, he s a man, but yet he s the one you want to get into the lifeboat with.
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But then there is Pablo Escobar, one of the most dangerous humans in history, plus the US government.
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Very difficult to get away.
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In terms of your faith, how has your faith helped you to be the woman you are in this relationship, in seeing love the way you see it?
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Well, I think my faith gives me hope.
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I have lots of hope.
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It helps me to dwell on the good side.
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You know, whenever I meet someone and there s negative
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I try to see why they are like that, or what s the source of all that, and I try to pull out the good.
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I really do.
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Not that I m a goody-goody, but that s what your faith does, you know?
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You see them as God sees us, you know?
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How has he changed over the years?
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Roger?
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Yeah.
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He s still the same.
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Actually, I like him better now.
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He s a little calmer.
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Yeah, that s crazy.
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Oh, yes.
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And happy to be at home where he ll say, Mari, I am just so happy to be with you here in this condominium.
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I m content.
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Because I used to call him my homing pigeon.
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I just have to let him fly.
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I couldn t.
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No, he has to fly, but he always came home.
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Do you think about the end of this ride, our mortality?
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Do you think about your death?
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I do.
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Particularly, I m going to have a heart valve replacement in about seven days where I could not make it.
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You know, it s a very serious operation.
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And I think about that very much.
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And I ask for peace.
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I just lost my brother about 10 days ago, so unexpectedly.
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And that really makes you think of your mortality.
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Are you afraid?
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Somewhat and yet not.
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Yeah, I want to live, Lex.
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I want to live, you know?
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This life is fun.
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Yes.
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Do you think about your death, Roger?
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But I have visions.
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I have visions and they often happen very, very clear, like what I have seen in the future.
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Scientists might call it wormholes or in the Old Testament, they called it prophets.
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But I see sometimes in the future around the corner, as clear as we re sitting right here.
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What s that look like?
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I was on a porch and I believe I was in like Central America place.
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I was an old man with khaki pants and a white shirt and it was a chair with a wide arms and it was straight and there s like the beams coming out above my head and I m on the porch.
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And I have out-of-the-body experiences also.
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And I came out of my body, I just floated out of my body and went into a veil, like into a mist.
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And I believe that s probably why it happened.
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You talk about like it s in your past.
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This is your future.
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This is my future.
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But this is something he has seen in the past.
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No, I know, but it s funny, just the tense you use, it happened, and yet it s something that will happen.
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Yes.
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Both are true.
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It s just unbelievable.
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And I don t know how many people have it, but I have it.
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I walked out of my body just like, just where I could come up to you and look and set up on the radio.
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I used to be at work on the railroad, and I had one there.
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How do you explain that?
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What do you think, what the heck is going on in this universe that s possible?
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Oh, I don t know, but it s certainly a phenomenon that happened.
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And there s a guy, Bill Monroe, that wrote the book, Out of the Body.
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He tells about it.
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And who was the guy that writes The Alchemist?
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Pablo Coelho.
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He has them also, just like that.
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And he tells about how it happens on him.
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Mine happened differently.
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but you certainly can come out of your body.
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What do you think the meaning of this life is?
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Maybe from your faith, but also from just the amazing adventure that you lived through.
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How do you make sense of why the heck we re here?
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I don t know.
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It s just kind of like who you are.
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Even when I was a child, I was like, I m different from other people.
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You know?
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And just as a boy, I was.
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Could you put into words how you were different or it was just the feeling?
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Yeah, like my brother, I mean, he kept his hands clean and his shoes shining.
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Here I was barefooted catching a wild hog or wrestling a horse trying to get it down.
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I saw pictures of you climbing a tree.
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When I first got out of prison, always something like that.
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So I don t know.
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And I noticed that something about me is sometimes in prison, there d be a knife fight.
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And people just, you see them rough guys that turn white from it.
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I just kind of almost like smile.
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I mean, unless they come at me, I ll turn white and get away.
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But it doesn t bother, those things just doesn t bother me.
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I just, prison didn t bother me.
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So you don t know what the heck the meaning is, you just know you re a bit different than the others.
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Yeah, might be a little bit kooky.
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Well, maybe the whole point is you wanna realize, you wanna let that madness flourish, that uniqueness flourish.
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That s the whole point of life.
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We re all different in our, in like very interesting little ways.
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Yes.
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And the more different you are, you wanna let that,
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You want to let that become, you want to let it be its full possibility.
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It s like a garden, you know, all the different flowers.
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You did mention you weren t sure if there s a free will or not.
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Do you think it s all predetermined, or do you think we make our own choices?
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No, we don t make our own decisions.
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I just said if it is, I hope that.
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But I know that we make our own decisions.
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Yes, I agree.
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And I know that we are spirits that are living in this flesh.
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That s beyond a shadow of a doubt for me.
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If you walk out of your body and have out-of-body experience, you will know it.
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So the body is just a temporary container for something much bigger.
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The spirit lives on eternally with no beginning and no end.
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And that s hard to fathom.
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This is a shell to contain that spirit.
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This is the way we work on earth.
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But yeah, I know, I m an eternal being.
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So are you.
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Do you think there s a why to it?
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Do you think there s a meaning to this life?
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Well, I think the why is beyond my capability of understanding.
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It s someone greater than me.
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I don t understand it, but it s awesome.
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I just know that it s awesome.
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And one day we will know the answers.
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Once we get to that crossover to the other side, I think we will understand clearly.
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It says, you know, now we see through a glass darkly, but then when we are face to face with God, we will understand.
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And until we know, let s just enjoy this beautiful life while we got it.
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Absolutely.
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And we re meant to.
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That was my gift.
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I love everybody and everything.
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I do.
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And I m sorry if I put a stumbling block in anybody s way.
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I wouldn t want to.
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But these are these things that I just think about.
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Oh, what a hypocritical world we live in, though.
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Like most anybody, I d say, listen, okay, he s a drug dealer.
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And I would say most of them have committed adultery.
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That s a cardinal sin.
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And yet they throw rocks at me for moving marijuana or cocaine across the road.
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It s just if you saw the two different things, you d say, what a terrible difference it is.
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But we ve become conditioned with this mad society that we have.
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You mentioned that your daughter, Miriam, wrote you a poem.
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Do you mind reading it?
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I d be glad to.
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I was doing 11 years up in Lombok Penitentiary, maximum security prison for parole violation for possession of marijuana in 1977.
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They should have given me six months, but they gave me 11 years because they wanted me for what they call silent beef.
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Anyhow, while I was in that dungeon, I received a letter from my daughter, Miriam.
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It s called Daddy s Poem.
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A year ago I became a poet when I wrote your birthday prose, and here I am today ready to give it another go.
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First, I would like to wish you a very happy birthday to be, and to thank you so very much, for without you I would not be me.
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Secondly, I want to say that your support has been immense.
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It has been true, honest, loving, and free of all pretense.
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Thirdly, it goes without saying, your love has surpassed all my wrongs, and you always made me smile with one of your old country songs.
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I can remember on Cuervo, Daddy, with you holding me in your arms as you sang Jim Reeve songs and talked about the farm.
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I can see you walking through the door from one of your travels far and wide, and the thought of you coming home, Daddy, kept a twinkle in our eyes.
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I can smell you as I did when I used to climb into your bed and you would talk to me again about one of the adventures that you led.
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I can see me and Mario asleep in one of your airplanes extraordinaire and remembering wondering to myself why there wasn t an available chair.
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I remember having to meet you and worrying that you wouldn t be there, but you would pop up from behind some counter and give us all a happy scare.
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You gave us presents in Key Biscayne, in hotels Pleasure Galore, and three dozen roses as we came through the airport door.
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I can see your face in Amsterdam with the luggage carousel, and you look like a boy with a secret that you were just dying to tell.
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You taught me mathematics in the sands of faraway places, and taught me to sail, and we left without any traces.
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We climbed glaciers in Argentina, and saw the blue of the beautiful caves, and witnessed the majestic
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beauty of such a jaggling maze.
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I learned how to change gears on the dirt roads of Brazil.
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We ate hot dogs in Paraguay, a memory we smile over still.
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We talked about lions, elephants, and bears on the Hacienda in Uruguay, but decided it was better if to Europe we did fly.
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Oh, the old world in all its luxury, what a good time it was.
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From South America to the Krasnopolsky, I think we fell in love.
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The European jaunt, well,
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It is considered a book in itself, but it s a story about beauty and knowledge, suspense, and worldly wealth.
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We went from Holland to Sweden, and we went from France to Spain, and I promise you I have no regrets.
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I would definitely do it all again.
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I would see the world with you anytime, sir.
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There s no doubt in my mind, because being by your side, Daddy, always ensures a wild good time.
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So our paths took a turn, and we re back in the U.S.
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of A. But life here isn t so bad, and I m plum content to stay.
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I m happy to be near you, although I m not as close as I was before.
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But because of your love and encouragement, I ve been able to open new doors.
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I m grateful to be in school, and I m generally happy where I am.
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And I even like when you call and tell me to study for the next exam.
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What a life you ve given me, Daddy.
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It s a tremendous and a magical gift.
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We already have so many stories to tell, there are far too many to list.
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But I want to thank you again this day with a very big happy birthday to you and to tell you just a few more things that I knew in my heart to be true.
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That I love you, Daddy, with all of your wrongs and your rights.
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That you re a head of our family and you ve kept us all bound tight.
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that you have an honest love in your heart for God and all mankind, and you truly do believe in yourself when you say it will all be fine.
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I know you will be there to catch me if ever I waver or slip, and I know I d want you as captain on any sinking ship.
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I also know a new chapter is written.
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It s almost time to move on.
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It s time to sail another sea and to witness a brand new dawn.
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It ll be good to see you at the helm again, as you point out our destination, and to laugh and dance on the upper deckers while the boat glides through
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It ll be good to see you on the go, as I know you like to be, and to know you can open any door without any key.
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But while we revel in our days together, we will know better than to hurry, because as you told me many times, life is an incredible journey.
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Wow, that s beautiful.
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Yeah.
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Roger,
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I m really honored that you would take the time to visit me in Texas and to sit down and talk with me.
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Thank you so much, Roger.
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Thanks so much, Mark.
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Thank you.
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It was a pleasure.
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It s been a real pleasure.
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Yes.
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Beautiful.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Roger Reeves, and thank you to Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Aidsleep.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Pablo Escobar.
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All empires are created of blood and fire.
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Thank you for listening, I hope to see you next time.