Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
roger reeves one of the most prolific
drug smugglers in history
he worked for pablo escobar and jorge
ochoa
the leaders behind the medellin cartel
roger was the employer and close friend
of barry seal
the infamous drug smuggler who was the
main character in the movie
american-made
roger transported countless tons of
cocaine and marijuana
covering six continents he escaped
prison five times
was shut down in both mexico and
colombia and was tortured
nearly to death in a mexican prison
through all of this his wife mari the
love of his life
was there with him and when he was in
prison she waited
for him he recently got out of prison
where for many years he worked on his
memoir
called smuggler this podcast is an
exploration of a story
quick mention of our sponsors noom all
form
expressvpn four sigmatic and aidsleep
check them out in the description to
support this podcast let me say a few
words about roger reeves
pablo escobar and the war on drugs this
conversation with roger is unlike any
i've ever done
in the eyes of many including the law
roger is a criminal
a bad man who has added to the suffering
in the world
but he never directly engaged or
participated in the violence
unlike his bosses pablo escobar and
jorge ochoa
his crime was a transport of drugs 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 we sometimes idolize
murderers
and destroy good honest men we give
power and money to corrupt politicians
and dictators that starve and murder
their own people given this
i think about what makes for a good man
and what makes for a bad man
and who decides 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
again his crime was the transport of
drugs since 1971 the war on drugs has
cost us
one trillion dollars marijuana
legalization alone would save and make
13.7 billion dollars that could send
more than 650 000 students to public
universities every year
then there's a human stories of the 500
000 human beings sitting in prison for
drug-related offenses
and the 1.1 million on probation and
parole
their life is damaged or ruined beyond
repair
due to the prohibition of drugs there's
a lot more to be said
about the damage done by the war on
drugs 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 path to even give power to
even men who hold political office or
run companies
i also think about my role as an
interviewer sitting across a man like
roger
in these interviews in life in many ways
i continue to be myself
a person who like dostoyevsky is the
idiot seeks the good in all people
but is hurt by it on occasion and maybe
is destroyed by it
in the end i'm not naive but i'm also
optimistic
and have hope for humanity that's who i
am
and that's what these conversations are
i hope you join me
and i hope you understand that i come
from a place of love
this is the lex friedman podcast and
here's my conversation
with roger reeves you are
one of the most prolific drug smugglers
in history
what would you say motivated you money
power
the thrill or was it something else
money but
isn't there a point where you've had
more money than you can possibly know
what to do with
was it always more money you know
i had plenty of money several times 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 were stumbling around you and you
had sweepers
bagging them up when would you let it go
but isn't some part of that the thrill
then oh it was a lot of
real sometimes way too much you made uh
certainly tens of millions of dollars
probably much more what memorable
experience
did having that much money make possible
for you so there's one thing is the
money
and the other thing is what that money
can buy
well i bought everything that i could
hide i bought
seven farms i owned uh the uh
the city the land where the city of
moreno valley california is
had an option on that land did the
planning and development of that
uh the most expensive corn in the world
yachts ships airplanes galore
that bring you happiness no absolutely
not
in fact i think i'm happier now i know
i'm happier now so looking back
would you do it the same way all again
no way really even the thrill of it
not even the thrill of it it wasn't
worth 33 years in prison
being away from my lovely family
so money what about the power just being
on top of the world where nobody can
not the the governments
the police all the big bad agencies
chasing you and you could do whatever
the heck you wanted
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
it's rather uncomfortable yeah
um i like to make phone calls the same
way
what was it like meeting and working
with pablo escobar
the leader of the medellin cartel he was
just uh
just seemed like a gentleman when i met
him just like you and i sitting here
shook hands and
i had flown one load for a fella and uh
it didn't work out well the fellow that
i give it to got shot and it took a
while to get my money and 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 and my contact down there
introduced me to
jorge ochoa and uh we went up
and in vegata we went up and the gate
opened and we was escorted in they must
have been
50 men out in the yards a hission rail
on an old house
and we was escorted right in and they
was a beautiful woman in there i mean
gore drop dead beautiful and she made us
a cup of coffee
then was ushered in to see jorge ochoa
and he had 12 telephones on his desk and
all of them was a different color
and he shook hands was very friendly
spoke english
and he said that each one of those
telephones were represented in another
city in the united states this is
chicago and this is new york if i ring i
knew who's calling
and so we chatted a while and uh he
asked me what type of airplanes i had
and what experience i had flying across
the u.s border
and i told him he seemed pleased with it
and he called the lady in and she went
next door
and came pablo escobar and he introduced
me to pablo escobar and
he asked the same questions again and uh
i answered them and i said
and i i asked them how much they paid
and they paid five thousand dollars a
kilo
to haul it and uh so that's how much he
put on the plane he's 300 500
that's one and a half two and a half
million dollars for an eight-hour trip
sounded pretty good to me and we're
talking about cocaine
cocaine we're talking about colombia
colombia and cocaine and medellin cartel
and uh jorge ochoa was one of the what
would you say
founding members of the probably the
brains behind the whole thing
the brains and spoke good english yes
and they were nice people
really nice people were you scared not
at all
what's wrong with your mind that you
weren't scared here's some of the most
dangerous men
in this world and you weren't scared
well i knew i was going to do exactly
what i said i was going to do
murray and the children were down there
they went down and they stayed in the
hotel
five star and treated royally on my
first load
and they just did ask security to make
sure that i wasn't a dea agent
so i uh i did the first load and
they would they can say they were
hostages but they really weren't it was
just
insurance so there was some integrity to
the way they operated
completely i mean straight straight up
the money was ironed and bad banded
and just right and the numbers were
never once
anything wrong with it what would you
attribute that honesty to
within the their own moral system and
their own set of rules
why weren't people crossing the line and
shaving off the top
and and uh injecting chaos into the
system to where
it would be unpredictable and people
would be dishonest and greedy and all
those kinds of things
that's true most people are but there's
certain people at the top of the food
chain
that they don't need that and if they're
completely honest
then they don't have to think of
remember the lie they told
and and plus they just honest to start
with they're they're they making plenty
of money
they was making as much money as i did
i uh i'll tell you how that um that came
about
i understand that 10 000 people were
killed every year in medellin colombia
and what they were doing they didn't
they didn't have any organization
and uh if one fellow had 10 kilos and he
wanted it shipped to
new york he would tell his friend and
his friend said sure i'll ship it i have
a pilot and i'll ship it up
and then he would look in the newspapers
oh 40 kilos was busted in new jersey
i'm so sorry yours got busted bang bang
he's dead
so here comes jorge ochoa and the
three ochoa brothers and pablo escobar
and gotcho and
they decided that we will make an
insurance company
that we would charge you ten thousand
dollars to take it to your
contact in miami
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 colombia for you
so there was no way anybody could lose
and i understand they got a hundred tons
piled up
under that insurance program and i was
right there the first day
so i had all the work i could do i would
land in this i said when you want me to
come back
we waiting on you senor well let me ask
a difficult question uh
some see escobar as a brutal murderer
and some see him as
um maybe a robin hood like figure who
helped the poor
how do you see the man both of them i
think he started out to be honest would
help the poor
and then they had a war down there and
they blew up and killed his people
and uh the country was divided almost
equally three ways
they had the uh the military
they were just as much into it as
anybody and then you had the
farc guerrillas they had about a third
of the country
and then you had the contras it was like
the white farmers
and uh they're the ones that i was
dealing with and they were at war with
one another
and so if one of them started killing
their people i'll kill some of yours too
so that that's how it happened 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
that's that's brutal murder so you would
say
escobar is not a good man not at all
he's terrible
now looking back on it when i met him he
was good
did just exactly what he said he would
do could he be a bad man and a man you
can trust
are those absolutely you could trust him
yes
so from your perspective in terms of
business
he was reliable he was honest had
integrity
you could work with him oh he felt safe
completely
we flew up and uh to his ranch and even
we brought out motorcycles to start with
and can you ride a motorcycle of course
i can ride a motorcycle
so i took off across the grass and there
was a little ditch there
and the front wheel dropped in that
thing and i must have slid across that
grass 20 feet
before i got stopped he almost fell off
for his
bike waiting because they knew what it
was going to do and then we got on
horses
and went out there and pretended to
round up some cows
and he put a mac 10 machine gun pistol
over my shoulder
you know how to use this well i never
had but it was all right
i think it was like okay you got 10
bodyguards what do you need me for
so that's the kind of time we laughed
and talked and drove some cows over the
stumps
you said jorge ochoa was perhaps the
brains
of the medellin cartel
what was he like and why do you say he
was the brains
well he was a gentleman and i suppose he
shipped and don't tell me how many more
times of cocaine than pablo did
just in him and his brothers you could
tell by the they had on each
hl load they was in duffel bags and
there's big football shaped
uh fluffy stuff made with ether
and they would have three horns on it or
a rattlesnake or four x's on each bag
you kind of got to knowing which was
which was which and they shipped a lot
so um and he was just a gentleman i took
the family we went one weekend to his
ranch or his uh malaysia place
out near barangay and oh
we he just treated the family and his
family had
his younger brother wrote we made a bull
fight and
we had uh skiing and
little airplanes on floats on the water
it was really nice and he was really
nice
how do you make sense of the tension
that a man could be a gentleman can have
integrity but also be a murderer
well murder is is a is a stronger word
than killing
can you explain the the the line the
gray area we're talking about
i mean i've just talking with jocko
willing and we talked a lot about
killing in the context of uh
military conflict and context of war
so there there's a line between murder
and killing that you can draw
what's the line that you're referring to
it's something similar
if you if people shooting at you and you
shoot back and kill him i don't that's
not murder whatsoever it's uh
he's trying to get away or out of the
situation
but if some woman don't pay you and you
send a hit man over
to to kill her and her children that's
that's that's murder that's murder
was jorge involved in those kinds of
things i don't think so at all it just
i mean he was he was just such a
gentleman he had a restaurant before and
and he was just smart i understand that
uh the first
10 kilos he sold he was sitting on them
on a motorcycle in the
in the sidelines in a parking lot when
the dea come in he sped away
so he didn't come back to america he was
just smart some people just have
are savvy and he was such a gentleman
and the whole family the mother and the
father
the two brothers their sister it was i
was there when she was kidnapped
and uh finally he kidnapped our
i guess 100 liters of the farc
and uh said all right and she don't come
back none of these are going to come
back
so they made a deal is there something
you can say about the power structure
the hierarchy of the
median cartel that you interacted with
was uh
was it a dictatorship where pablo ran
everything
was there a bunch of power centers was
it like a company
would you have ceo cto kind of thing and
then there's like managers and all those
kinds of things
what's the like how did it run from a
leadership perspective
i understand that about five of them got
together
and made this i would call it an
insurance company
and uh now known as the medellin cartel
and i didn't see any difference 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 and uh so didn't it
didn't seem to be any
any power play between them at all but
my main contact was jorge ochoa
and pablo escort bar was right there and
i saw plenty of stuff for him too it's
strange
that they didn't betray each other
regularly
you know uh greed makes men betray each
other
how do you explain that how much
betrayal did you see
i didn't see any absolutely none
if if they shipped his 100 kilos he got
paid for it
if the other one uh shipped his i'm sure
they got paid for it
how do you explain that well there was
no need to
the money was just unbelievable you
think about 500 kilos in the plane
at fifty thousand dollars a kilo at the
time
and they paid five thousand dollars to
ship it
and they made five thousand without even
touching it they just had
somebody to load it onto the airplane i
gave it to their man in miami
they gave it to whoever it belonged to
by the uh
by the marks on the duffel bags so they
was making just
untold millions just uh
no reason but greed can blind men i
you know it's still
it's still strange to me that there was
not more betrayal
it speaks to something else perhaps
that's bigger than money
maybe maybe not but it seems like just
like in the casino like you mentioned
uh we um get accustomed to the
whatever level of money we have we get
accustomed very quickly yes
and then there's a tension that's
natural between human beings
and when that tension combined with
money
combined with power combined with like
you mentioned
beautiful women and a bit of violence
it seems that um betrayal should be
commonplace
but it's not it was not at all like
carlos later
i don't know he betrayed anybody but he
started that he was
running cocaine through the bahamas and
he had the island
i didn't go i was offered to fly with a
dc3 with that but i didn't like it
so i had my route through the old wheels
in louisiana
and uh so i you weren't going to change
but uh he
he talked a lot and i don't know he
betrayed but they didn't like him
yeah so as you expand there could be
tensions that
yeah that lead to conflict colombia was
like you said an ultra violent place
how did you survive who protected you i
was a hero
they they liked me i mean i was just
treated royally all i did
i would come over el banco there's a
radio station at the forks of the
magdalena river
i believe at 7 20 if i remember right on
the am and i'd fly in at 10 000 feet and
i'd see below me there'd be a cessna
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
i'd land on some jungle strip or some uh
banana plantation and they'd fuel me up
i could eat
steak in the night it was just like
treated royally and
i mean take off the next morning
whenever i wanted to it was just like
that was protected
and i was i was honored guest
it wasn't anything like in that movie
putting you putting a gun to your head
and taking your sunglasses
and betting so one time i uh complained
to um
jorge ochoa that the runway was pretty
short that they were using
and i went back down and it looked like
los angeles international they had
bulldozers in there
had that thing 5 000 feet long just like
just
the next week it was all done the jungle
was gone and clay put up there and
and all the while you were not afraid
you were treated like royalty
yes there i was i was afraid when i
landed in the united states
well maybe let's go back to the
beginning what was the first time
you uh flew an airplane with drugs on it
tell me the story the first time you
smuggled drugs all right i uh
i flew down to halapa vera cruz
with a cessna 182. and uh
we landed the town it was a lovely town
and this an old town looked like
bible times people women were washing
their clothes in the streets and
with stone basins in the stream running
through i just was just
dumb struck it was just so pretty and i
went in a church and a catholic church
and it had the stations of the cross
all carved magnificent i'd never seen
that
and i come home and told murray about
that that was just almost brought tears
to my eyes it was so beautiful
and three o'clock the next morning i
went out to the airport and taxed it
down to the taxiway and
there was a guard came out and uh
wanted to know what i was doing and i
pulled out i was on the i was on the
fire department at redondo beach
california
so i pulled out my wallet and then and
it was the fire department bash and oh
he shook my hand was so glad
so i taxed it on down and we loaded up
about 400 pounds in the plane
and uh came on back and i was uh running
the headwinds more than i thought
and i landed on a little strip you're
talking about on the way back
on the way back on the way north after
we loaded up early in the morning
and uh for only time i ever got vertigo
the mountains were coming down at a
30 or 40 degree angle and uh milky was
where he was overhead and somehow i
wanted that airplane to be
level with the stars and it got it got
me
it's just a phenomenal pile of house
vertigo the only time i ever had it was
on that load
so anyway the wind was on the nose of
that cessna i wasn't going to make it to
the dry lake where i had fuel
so i landed on a little bitty strip
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 heard and some goats
so we put the marijuana in that house
and the man stayed with it so while i
flew into some town
and got fueled and came back we sat down
with the lunch that i brought back and
little lads were sat there and ate with
us and we had a good time we loaded them
back and came over
oh wow i wonder where he is now
what was it like to fly maybe describe
the details of
do you have to fly low um is there
details
that are unique to this experience of
flying an
airplane with drugs on it on board all
right well
one of the mistakes that just thousands
hundreds and hundreds and thousands of
pilots make they don't stop at the
border
going down and get their permit once you
get a permit to be in mexico
you've got it for six months you can go
anywhere any fishing village any little
town any little place
show them this and you're welcome if you
don't have that you go straight to jail
so you go down there and you think okay
they're going to have fuel for me to
come back and so forth oh sorry senor
that was uh had a rusty leak in it we
don't have any
well you better be able to go to town
and get it yeah so
that's what i did and when i was coming
back for
several years i would fly uh fly up at
mexicali and cross the border right at
calexico
just i would act like i was landing on
the clexico side just after dark
and then i'd zip across the border and i
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 and
above palm springs and
land out 29 palms in the desert and put
my
stuff under joshua tree and fly into
town and get my pickup and go on back
out and get it
and that was fun and then it got really
dangerous they had a
operation starlight i believe was the
name of it and they caught a lot of
pilots coming across the border
so i changed it and by that time i was
flying bigger planes i was flying beach
18s
and i would refuel in moulihae on the
halfway down on the
baja peninsula and then over in the
middle
20 miles from the nearest road was a was
a goat ranch where they milked goats and
made cheese
and i would go there and unload the load
coming up out of anywhere in southern
mexico
and i would land there and a guy named
juan would uh
we'd put the put the marijuana under the
trees and i'd fly in the mullet
and they'd wash my plane and gassed it
up my
i'd ease a lunch and rent a room for a
few hours and take a nap and shower
and then go back afternoon and fill up
and then i would go northwest
out of there and fly 200 miles off the
coast of the island of guadalupe
and from there i would fly on a more
northwestern heading about 300 miles out
over the pacific
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 and i
did that
for the rest of the marijuana trips
what was the hardest part about flying
those routes
the hardest part was getting good
marijuana
so the hardest part isn't the flying
flying just like driving your car down
but then i had people that would bring
me on strips that were just
unworthy of an airplane right when i'd
land on a highway
and uh and this and in the rainy season
i'd come back to land again and the guy
wouldn't think about it have like little
hills on both sides and
the wings right there well the grass and
the weeds would grow up and it sounded
like
i mean it sounded like tearing the
airplane apart when those wings hit
mowing the grass down both
both shoulders of the airplane the weeds
grew up high in the tropics
so some of that stuff was bad and oh
getting bad gasoline and
telling me that land here and the light
and and
knock the wheels off when you land oh
you should have landed a little
further up here saying you know they
ditched down yeah you know
that sort of thing what was it like
landing on a highway and
and when did you have to land on the
highway i landed a highway most of my
life most of the times
in mexico first time i went down there
was a place called picchulingi
and they had a 900-foot strip and
i would fly down and i'd carry gasoline
wing with me and
mari and i would go to the grocery store
and buy all kind of little goodies and
candies and toys
to bring to the children and uh
that sand strip in the in the bend of a
river
was just too short to take off with a
load so there was a young man there
named pedro must not weighed much over
100 maybe 120
pounds and he'd get in a plane with me
and
he'd direct me 20 30 40 miles away to a
highway
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 their arms were just and
they'd block the road and then another
one block it up about a mile away
not land right over that truck and
they'd load me up it looked like a
bucket brigade when the marijuana coming
i'd shake hands with all of them and i'd
take off right over the other trucks
and sometimes maybe 20 30 40 cars lined
up i
one time i remember a patrol car a
highway patrol car
he didn't have his lights on to go right
over him and then
when i started flying to louisiana the
bridge over the mississippi
river there were several contractors
that went broke and that thing was out
for years
and about five miles from the river was
flashing red lights
and a detour and then the swamp on both
sides of it in the middle of it we've
grown up with 20
feet trees and that was like
an international runway from anywhere in
the world
so i landed on that and over and over
those red lights just like the end of a
runway
and then the next morning we'd go out
and scrub the marks off the highway
where i'd landed
before daylight wow let's go to
somebody you've known well somebody who
is
who's also a drug smuggler is barry seal
who is barry seale how did you meet him
bear seal is a friend of mine
uh mari and i and the children went down
in uh
honduras and we went up uh lake azul
i believe it was and was looking at a
ranch to buy i was looking for something
in central america where i'd have a
halfway place oh it was lovely we stayed
up there for some days and our clothes
got
muddy and we went in the river and all
kind of thing so we got to san pedro
sula
and uh was going back to new orleans so
uh went to to the cleaners to get our
clothes and most all of them was in
there
and they got old senor they'll be ready
tomorrow morning we're not ready now
well the plane leaves it
nine o'clock or whatever so
i told murray to for her and the
children to go into the airport because
it'd be
easier for one just on a standby flight
so i went to the
laundromat for the clothes and they were
ready and they was a pile up and i put
them on my back and got into taxi and
the old taxi would drive him with it and
i'd give him a hundred dollars to go
faster and he just blew his horn
more rapid
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
oh no so i'm waving to the pilot and
this young fella he waves back
then i see mari's face in the cockpit
and the nose goes down where he puts on
brakes and he laughs and he puts some
stairwell out
and i run for the stairwell and he pulls
it back up and goes like a hitchhiker
gonna pick you up and go
go again then he put it out and i got on
an
old crowd clapped and i'm coming home
with that load of clothes
so i go way down in the middle and the
plane's full
and miriam my daughter's about nine
years old then
and she was sitting in the middle and by
the window was seal of course i didn't
know it
and i sat in the middle and uh we took
off and
the wheels come up with clunk and then i
got up about 5000 feet we had a little
click link
and she said what was that daddy i said
he just turned on his autopilot
that fellow reached over and i looked at
him i said he looks like c.i.a or fbi
something he ain't supposed to be here
clear blue eyes
gentlemen looking man and he
he said you fly these things i said i
got a few hours mister he said i i fly
them too or something other than they
said my name barry seal and he reached
over miriam
shook hands and we got to talking and
i thought no choice of seats on this
it's just open seating so
but i don't believe him one bit
and he started talking about he just got
out of jail that morning just got out of
prison
and i said uh-huh
and he told me he'd been a pilot with a
twa in this another
and uh told me what he was for and so we
had a nice
conversation with a couple hours to new
orleans i didn't believe him
yeah so he got off in front of us and
what a crowd of people
to meet him an old mother and a wife and
little
children hanging on to him crying and
hugging and kissing him i said
he was telling the truth
so i reached over and gave him a little
piece of paper i had maury to write it
out with our address i said barry i
might have some work for you because
he's in jail for
he got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine
and a small plane
and so he served a year and that was
from colombia
i don't know where he comes from he got
caught in honduras probably refueling
but he'd be he'd been in prison down
here before for bringing explosives to
the um
cuban contras and he lost his job with
the airlines
and then later on i found out he was
xcia and george bush seniors protege and
had a thousand parachute jumps and was
there
he was a hot shot there's a million
questions
i want to ask here but uh maybe can we
linger on a little bit longer what was
your relationship with him like
you you were a drug smuggler he's a drug
smuggler
um your friends
how often do you guys talk how often do
you work together
what was the relationship like well i
back up and just finished where i
started off there
he uh i gave him a thanks bear i may
have some work for you i know i got some
work for you
and uh i said come out santa barbara
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 and i had a
almost brand new uh arrow commander 690b
that thing was turboprop and it was hot
it's the hardest thing i'd ever had so i
said
let's go barry let's see what you can do
so i'm sorry i said that
we got about 9 000 feet and he was like
one of them blue angel pilots
he wrung that thing out yeah you know
that's enough and then um
he did the falling leaf that's where you
cut the engines and the plane
falls from side to side i saw bob hoover
do that in the air show once
and that's the only person i ever saw do
it and i was
my hand was white knuckle hanging onto
the seat you shut off the engine
yeah he shut off the engines and landing
flying side by side like this
how do you explain that was he just uh a
wild man
or was he sufficiently skilled to wear
sufficiently skilled
absolutely he knew what he was doing i
can get a plane from one spot to another
and i guess i'm known as a good pilot
but that guy
it was aerobatic
[Laughter]
so anyway he stayed with us a couple of
days and then i told him i said this
plane needs uh
needs tank and i guess i got some work
done in colombia needs to come back to
louisiana
and i need 2 500 mile range he said i
got somebody in mina arkansas do that
and keep the mouse shut
so i gave him 10 000 and he flew away
and in a few days he called me and says
come to my house in
baton rouge so i went out to his house
in baton rouge and
i stayed with him for a few days and
that plane was tanked i mean beautiful
from
stem to stern i could went from bolivia
to canada with him
so uh he was uh then i hired him to fly
and uh he was funny i paid him a million
dollars a trip i beat him two thousand
dollars a kilo so
about a million ultra and i didn't get
paid
until they the people received it they
had to ship it to
chicago and new york and then the money
come back so it was a couple of
two or three weeks pipeline well i was
had to pay him
before before he'd go again i mean and
he bellyache
i mean he had moaning room so uh
one time i uh i gave him a million
dollars and i put it in a box real nice
so how big is a box that contains a
million dollars so we're talking about
bills hundred dollars it's not very big
you can put in a large briefcase
it weighs exactly 10 kilos each hbill
weighs a gram so you can weigh your
money
and almost get it exactly 10. 20
something pounds is a million dollars 22
pounds
22 pounds 100 bills but a hundred
and one dollar bills it's one ton two
thousand two hundred pounds
we didn't even accept them were you the
one that introduced barry seal to uh
pablo escobar
no i didn't introduce him at all and uh
he and i our deal was that you don't
meet my people i mean we just kind of
crossed you working for me
to fly the airplanes so he wanted these
panther conversions cost four hundred
thousand dollars each
with a storm scope and radar so i want
anything you want
what's that mean sorry to interrupt
panther conversions a panther conversion
was a
these people called panther they
took everything out from the firewall
the instruments and all them converted
them
and put q-tip propellers on them
four-bladed and you're
very quiet and the cia developed those
in southeast asia for
running behind the lines and that's
where barry had flown those things so he
knew about him
so hey that's what he wanted and that's
what we got him
how does that connect to pablo and so he
worked for you
and you got those upgrades i i think he
flew about 30 loads for me and then i
got arrested and
was better for everything in the world
got 35 years sentence
but let me back up a little bit barry uh
was our friend
uh mari and i befriend we should pause
real quick and say
mari is uh uh your wife
and we'll hopefully she'll uh we'll
convince her to join us
in a little bit she's the love of your
life and sort of she uh
weaves in and out of many of these
stories that you tell
yes she was there she was behind the
scenes but i kept her out of it
completely
and then also you mentioned miriam as a
your daughter
yes rhett our son was a was a baby yeah
and uh i remember we went out to the
festival was my favorite restaurant in
carl gables
oh god it was good and barry knew about
it
anyhow we went out to dinner and uh
so we came back and there was no rooms
so very well would spend the night with
us so he goes to our hotel room with him
we got two
two big beds in the omni hotel and he
lays over there gets down to his stripy
undershorts and his t-shirt and he puts
the baby up on his belly and gives him
the bottle said
ain't that good red oh my my and he just
feeds the baby
we laugh and talk and that's how close
we were
that we could all stay in a hotel room
together
and would you say he's a good man a
wonderful man
a gentleman southern gentleman just
he's looked after his mother his family
everybody around him
everybody loved barry he just had a he
had a little
little smile on his face always so you
got arrested
and then what happened to barry well
barry knew the
the people that uh unloaded
of course he sent the cars down and all
that so he met
the unloader guy named lito louis carlos
bustamante
of venezuelan and uh so he's just kept
on flying
but he uh yeah i believe he had three of
my airplanes at 400
a piece and they owed me some money well
he collected a lot of that and
gave murray the money and put it in his
safe and took her to his house and all
after i got arrested and
sent all year in he got me the best
lawyer in the country
albert krieger he was head of the
defense team for all america
wonderful man can you tell
the story of the months that led up to
barry's assassination
what it what what what did you know what
did you sense
what did you think okay when i got out
of prison i hadn't been out long
i was uh watching eating breakfast and
there was ronald reagan's
face right in the television we have
absolute proof
that the communist sandinista government
is in the cocaine run in business
and there was that fat lady the c2
c-2126
on the runway would build it in and i
thought oh
god he had done it so i had heard
that barry might been working with him
so what mom working with
with the dea whoever yeah he did he is
he was no longer on our side you know
so uh can you clarify how you got that
from the
reagan making a statement about we've
heard okay there was his plane
there was a bearish plane and okay on
the way north we could stop in in
nicaragua and land on a military base or
on a a basis they used those crop
dusters and all
and refuel yeah and so that shortened
our trip would go
further into the jungle and come up and
that was what pablo escobar and ocho and
him and they had
there was associates with the people in
nicaragua so barry was if that plane
was there that means barry was feeding
the dea information
he was working with him at that time but
let me back up a little bit when
when i was flying and i told barry we
would we would refuel
and trains airplane the loads in police
where i had a spot up there
and then that's when the they told me we
can refuel in
in uh nicaragua and then you fly all the
way and barry couldn't believe it
he says all right but i wanted to land i
had a place in louisiana
for ten thousand dollars that i could
unload and
sheriff and oldham was paid off and uh
he said no
no no i can't get caught in me in
arkansas
i said what do you mean you can't get
caught in maniac so you get caught
anywhere
he said i can't if it can't but it's
going to cost you fifty thousand dollars
every time my wheels touch the ground
why can you explain why he can't get he
said he was
he was hooked up with the with him the
very top and he even said
i'm gonna have dinner with the governor
tonight
that's at that time i mean the arkansas
mr bill clinton
undoubtedly and it's a little like did
bill clinton did you give him any money
and i said no i never give the man any
money
but it was like the money that i had
went to grand cayman islands and i told
my lawyer i never touched that money
he said you don't have to fondle it to
be guilty
so so what i mean there's a lot of
conspiracy theories
around the relationship between pericle
and the clintons
absolutely what evidence do we have
what would you say from your best
understanding
of what was the relationship between
bill clinton and barry seal
barry said and he knew that he couldn't
get caught in me in arkansas
and when that movie was going to come
out be called mina
somebody stopped it i mean they stopped
it dead in the tracks for two or three
years and the producer even quit
you mean the american meds with tom
cruise movie it wasn't it was going to
be called meena it's the name that was
written and produced in mina
and wait waiting on hillary to be
elected
they they would not let that movie out
and that movie was changed
drastically but to push back on that
that doesn't mean there's
truth there that means they were worried
about
the power of the conspiracy theory which
stuck
exactly i don't know i mean you know
some conspiracy theories just because
they're popular doesn't mean they're
true
and ones that uh but it also doesn't
mean they're not true
and there's ones that are not very
popular that could be true but that one
that one really stuck did you do i mean
what's your sense
well i paid one and a half million
dollars for barry to land at meena
arkansas
so i was pretty well assured that he
couldn't get caught
and i said well i can't get caught in
colombia we can't get caught in
nicaragua
i guess we got a license it's that we
went for it 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
yes like completely safe so you don't
think he was referring to some kind of
um you know
like my grandfather who fought in world
war
ii would talk about bullets can't hit
him
so it's almost like believing back
he's taking that fifty thousand dollars
and giving it to somebody to somebody
and barry was honest so he wasn't just
taking it from me because he was making
a million dollars he didn't care for the
fifty thousand
ah man taking the story forward
uh the months leading up to his
assassination what what uh
what do you understand why he was
assassinated
who were the players involved
maybe could you have stopped
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 would bury i hadn't heard from
him in a couple years
he said i'm coming out tonight roger
and oh boy so uh
he came out he said i'll meet you in
this uh french restaurant i don't even
know in santa barbara
and i walked in there's about 20 or 30
people in there
and he was all 30 40 years old women
would
plastic leather skirts and me and their
blue jeans and i looked around and barry
was at the back
he was leaned up he'd gain weight and i
walked up and i said barry you wired
he said no i said i'm not going to talk
are these de agents
he said every one of them
[Laughter]
with jeans and skirts i like it
i said well barry i'm going to set you
and you just talk to me buddy and tell
me what's on your mind
and he sat there and he just went to
talking and he told me about
he was left holding the bag and that um
what do you mean by that like that
nobody's supported him or another
he was uh and and i don't know this i
mean this is just what
what happened uh putting it all together
that he had some cia buddies
that was pretending we're going to
supply all of our northwood arms
and with that you can land cocaine back
here by the ton
so he's taking his little planes and
putting some ak-47s and
maybe ammunition or whatever and takes
it down to
the contras against the communist
party of nicaragua where we've been
landing and oliver north was involved in
this
so uh when the when all that and so his
cia buddies was certainly
involved and we know they were and barry
had been in the cia
earlier when he first got out of school
so
uh when when uh
as i say the shit hit the fan they all
fled
and left barry hold in the back the cia
and the dea
yeah no not the dea the cia the dea
wasn't in on it cia was
was selling that cocaine bringing it in
and uh
just to clarify it uh what's iran contra
scandal
what was the alleged involvement of the
cia
in uh in using drug trade to fund
things what do you know what do you
think is true
what should we know 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 group were who oliver north was a
colonel that got
implemented and almost brought the
government down and so they said all
right
we're getting the guns from iran and
we're taking cocaine to pay for them
yeah and since congress won't give us
money to fight this war we're gonna
we're gonna circumvent it so that was
that was a whole thing so it was uh
cia's effort
to circumvent the funding mechanisms of
government
by you selling drugs yes but it was a
handful of renegade cia agents it was
barry's friends
that was making a load load of money
tons of it come up if you would like to
read the book the
the big white lie the cia and the crack
cocaine epidemic
the cia put according to this uh
the book in michael levine i i didn't
remember his name last time i talked
uh wrote that book and he was a head ci
agent
he was a dea agent that exposed this
and the cia tried to kill him and he
says they put crack cocaine they
developed their
their chemists developed crack and they
put it in every country every city in
the united states on one weekend
so they were bringing it up by the tons
and that's for sure
and barry was bringing it can i ask you
a small tangent
question do you think
the public should trust the cia and the
dea
do you think they're mostly good people
that are
carrying out a good mission yeah because
this kind of makes it sound like there's
renegade agents that are just
doing whatever the hell they want and
with uh
sometimes no regard for human life well
that's certainly true
but that's not everybody in there that's
just sometimes you get a few
policemen in the department that do
these things i
i don't believe i believe that our
government is is good
i think we've got some fools running it
yeah i don't know how we get them there
but
i don't think i know okay so what was
barry's involvement here
so barry very lean back in that chair
and he told me
that you know he'd uh he got caught with
one and a half tons
and he built it in the runway in
nicaragua
and uh had cameras
flashing inside and out and he flew it
back to homestead with
with an agent there and he brought the
agent over um
jake jacobson really nice fella i think
he was a crop duster
and we'd have got along we'd have been
on the right side and uh so we uh
we sat there and drank chevis regal
until i got pie-eyed
and barry told me about it he said that
he went to see edwin me see flew
he got out on bail and he flew his
learjet up to
washington and went in to see the
attorney general edwin meis
and they run him out of the office the
next day he went back said i have
absolute proof that the cia is bringing
tons of cocaine
are they running sons of cocaine into
the united states and edward
put him up with this agent jacobson i
believe it was
and they went down and got one and a
half tons and on the way back
they bellied it in and pablo escobar and
some of the other ones on general there
in nicaragua you can see them
toting it from one plane to the other
side in the book called the big
nose uh kings of cocaine it's got a
mention of me too
and also the other one has a mention of
me in it
said i'm in more files for the dea than
noriega
so who was wanted to get rid of barry is
that is it
who wanted to get rid of barry moore the
cartels or the cia
the cartel but uh so barry leaned back
and he and he he told me the story
and the tears came down between his
fingers and he put his hands over his
eyes and he said
i i got you couldn't do it roger i just
couldn't do three life sentences
so i've told him everything i went to
congress and i've testified before
congress
and he testified before congress for all
these things that he'd done
and he said i told them all about you
but you're under my
umbrella you got to testify with me
before grand jury in miami
and so the guy said you can come down
the de agent said you can come down
tomorrow with mari
first class or i'll take you down in
chains
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 was
that a difficult conversation
oh looking into my my guts was just like
ice water i can't testify against
my friends i just can't do it how am i
going to do it i just
i can't work with people and he was
honest with me how am i going to testify
against them
i can't spend the rest of my life in a
federal prison what on earth what a mess
barry you've got me into
so uh is that a kind of betrayal there
yes but it's still i wish he left me out
of it
i understand him getting his in such a
mess that he told
because if the cia and whoever else
would find him betrayed him
then he's going to tell everything if
you so i says all right i'll be to miami
so murray and i flew down
first class and i and i went to a lawyer
one of the biggest lawyers in miami and
i said man i am
in a mess this fellow's told everything
and i've got to say something
but i'm not a snitch man i mean i can
help
what can i do and he said well being a
snitch is like being pregnant you either
are you're not
[Laughter]
uh and he says i i don't represent
snitches but if you want to fight this
case i'll do it for six hundred thousand
dollars
and uh boy my face turn red well i'm not
a snitch he said well that's what you're
talking about he said let me tell you
something if you go in there and say one
thing
and sign that paper and you don't tell
them everything you know
yeah then they will convict you of
everything you've ever done and you tell
them
so you can't do it so uh
i said barry i'm having trouble with a
lawyer give it i'll go tomorrow let's go
so all right use my lawyer and he gave
me his card the lawyer's card so
murray and i went to the festival
restaurant that night and barry and
debbie came in she was dressed pretty
and
barry was and so he's already about
finished so we had dessert together
and i said barry they're going to kill
you friend he said no they ain't going
to kill me so and so
such and such is going and this another
i said barry they going to kill you man
they know
you can't deny it and uh you know i said
i didn't tell him i wasn't going to
testify so i i hugged his neck
i really like and we fled to brazil i
took murray and the children went to
brazil
so you decided there you're not going to
find you and still i wasn't gonna
i didn't know what i could do i'd talk
to a lawyer i mean i just didn't i
didn't know what what i could do but
the best in miami is what he told me so
i had to go
and he went to brazil we went to did you
have a conversation with anybody at the
cartel
just i mean that's such an interesting
moment that tests the man's character
to not snitch and
did you have a conversation with anybody
no pablo was
you know about it like so it's just
understood i just didn't couldn't do it
but how many men like you are there
not many i had all my friends testified
against me i had 11 friends and every
one of them put their finger up roger
did it
and i was facing life continuing
criminal enterprise care
still you couldn't do it i just couldn't
do it do you ever get respect
from the cartels for that from the oh
they were
time i got back and stuff they owe me
money and i can't get it
so well that's about money i just mean
about human beings
oh i think so i've been back down there
and i've been welcomed
i i have my uh my contact and when i was
in brazil i was trying to get this money
they owe me three and a half million
dollars
so i called up there and he was gonna
pay me oh i got six hundred thousand
t