Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Roger Reeves, one of the most prolific drug smugglers

00:00:05.000 | in history.

00:00:06.540 | He worked for Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa, the leaders behind the Medellin Cartel.

00:00:13.440 | Roger was the employer and close friend of Barry Seal, the infamous drug smuggler who

00:00:19.120 | was the main character in the movie American Maid.

00:00:22.040 | Roger transported countless tons of cocaine and marijuana, covering six continents.

00:00:28.180 | He escaped prison five times, was shut down in both Mexico and Colombia, and was tortured

00:00:33.820 | nearly to death in a Mexican prison.

00:00:37.040 | Through all of this, his wife Mari, the love of his life, was there with him, and when

00:00:42.400 | he was in prison, she waited for him.

00:00:45.320 | He recently got out of prison, where for many years he worked on his memoir called Smuggler.

00:00:50.800 | This podcast is an exploration of his story.

00:00:54.240 | Quick mention of our sponsors, Noom, Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Aidsleep.

00:01:01.920 | Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

00:01:04.360 | Let me say a few words about Roger Reeves, Pablo Escobar, and the war on drugs.

00:01:10.040 | This conversation with Roger is unlike any I've ever done.

00:01:13.400 | In the eyes of many, including the law, Roger is a criminal, a bad man who has added to

00:01:18.760 | the suffering of the world.

00:01:20.680 | But he never directly engaged or participated in the violence, unlike his bosses, Pablo

00:01:26.000 | Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.

00:01:29.380 | His crime was the transport of drugs.

00:01:32.080 | I thought about this, and about Pablo Escobar, who was at once both a brutal murderer and

00:01:38.200 | a Robin Hood figure who helped the poor and was loved by thousands, if not millions.

00:01:44.280 | We sometimes idolize murderers and destroy good, honest men.

00:01:48.320 | We give power and money to corrupt politicians and dictators that starve and murder their

00:01:52.400 | own people.

00:01:54.080 | Given this, I think about what makes for a good man, and what makes for a bad man, and

00:01:59.600 | who decides.

00:02:01.560 | Sitting across from Roger, I saw a complicated man, but one who has kindness in his heart,

00:02:06.920 | a love for money and adventure, and a disdain for violence.

00:02:11.680 | Again, his crime was the transport of drugs.

00:02:14.840 | Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost US $1 trillion.

00:02:20.440 | Marijuana legalization alone would save and make $13.7 billion.

00:02:26.280 | That could send more than 650,000 students to public universities every year.

00:02:31.520 | Then there's the human stories of the 500,000 human beings sitting in prison for drug-related

00:02:36.480 | offenses and the 1.1 million on probation and parole.

00:02:40.940 | Their life is damaged or ruined beyond repair due to the prohibition of drugs.

00:02:46.520 | There's a lot more to be said about the damage done by the war on drugs, but when reading

00:02:51.000 | about Roger's story and talking to him, I couldn't escape the thought that while society

00:02:56.000 | wants to label him a criminal and a bad human being, there are much worse men out there

00:03:01.440 | who we give a pass to, even give power to, even men who hold political office or run

00:03:07.720 | companies.

00:03:08.720 | I also think about my role as an interviewer, sitting across a man like Roger.

00:03:14.160 | In these interviews, in life, in many ways I continue to be myself, a person who like

00:03:20.000 | Dostoevsky's The Idiot, seeks the good in all people, but is hurt by it on occasion

00:03:26.120 | and maybe is destroyed by it in the end.

00:03:29.680 | I'm not naive, but I'm also optimistic and have hope for humanity.

00:03:34.520 | That's who I am, and that's what these conversations are.

00:03:37.640 | I hope you join me and I hope you understand that I come from a place of love.

00:03:43.320 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here's my conversation with Roger Reeves.

00:03:49.320 | You are one of the most prolific drug smugglers in history.

00:03:54.120 | What would you say motivated you?

00:03:55.920 | Money, power, the thrill, or was it something else?

00:03:59.720 | Money.

00:04:00.720 | But isn't there a point where you've had more money than you can possibly know what to do

00:04:05.680 | with?

00:04:06.680 | Or was it always more money?

00:04:09.080 | You know, I had plenty of money several times.

00:04:13.240 | And I think it's sort of like if you was in Las Vegas and you had the slot machine handled

00:04:19.360 | down and the gold coins was tumbling around you and you had sweepers bagging them up,

00:04:25.520 | when would you let it go?

00:04:27.480 | But isn't some part of that the thrill then?

00:04:29.680 | Oh, there was a lot of thrill, sometimes way too much.

00:04:33.280 | You made certainly tens of millions of dollars, probably much more.

00:04:37.240 | What memorable experience did having that much money make possible for you?

00:04:41.800 | So there's one thing is the money, and the other thing is what that money can buy.

00:04:46.400 | Well, I bought everything that I could hide.

00:04:50.200 | I bought seven farms.

00:04:52.160 | I owned the land where the city of Merino Valley, California is.

00:04:58.840 | I had an option on that land.

00:05:01.280 | Did the planning and development of that.

00:05:04.480 | The most expensive coin in the world.

00:05:06.880 | Yachts, ships, airplanes galore.

00:05:12.560 | That bring you happiness?

00:05:14.000 | No, absolutely not.

00:05:16.960 | In fact, I think I'm happier now.

00:05:18.280 | I know I'm happier now.

00:05:19.920 | So looking back, would you do it the same way all again?

00:05:24.840 | No way.

00:05:26.320 | Really?

00:05:27.400 | Even the thrill of it?

00:05:28.760 | Not even the thrill of it.

00:05:29.760 | It wasn't worth 33 years in prison, being away from my lovely family.

00:05:35.000 | So money, what about the power?

00:05:38.120 | Just being on top of the world where nobody can, not the governments, the police, all

00:05:46.640 | the big bad agencies chasing you.

00:05:50.440 | You could do whatever the heck you wanted.

00:05:52.800 | As far as having to look over your shoulder everywhere you went, every phone call you

00:05:57.440 | made, make sure that you was naked with somebody in the ocean before you talked.

00:06:02.040 | It's rather uncomfortable.

00:06:07.840 | I like to make phone calls the same way.

00:06:11.120 | What was it like meeting and working with Pablo Escobar, the leader of the Medellin

00:06:16.880 | cartel?

00:06:18.440 | He just seemed like a gentleman when I met him.

00:06:21.400 | He's just like you and I sitting here, shook hands.

00:06:24.160 | I had flown one load for a fellow, and it didn't work out well.

00:06:28.640 | The fellow that I gave it to got shot, and it took a while to get my money in.

00:06:32.200 | They didn't put as many kilos on the plane as they're supposed to, and so I wasn't

00:06:36.120 | going to work with them anymore.

00:06:37.360 | My contact down there introduced me to Jorge Ochoa.

00:06:42.400 | We went up in Envigada.

00:06:44.320 | We went up, and the gate opened, and we was escorted in.

00:06:47.120 | There must have been 50 men out in the yards, a hitching rail on an old house.

00:06:52.760 | We was escorted right in, and there was a beautiful woman in there.

00:06:57.040 | I mean gorgeous, drop-dead beautiful.

00:07:00.240 | She made us a cup of coffee and then was ushered in to see Jorge Ochoa.

00:07:06.160 | He had 12 telephones on his desk, and all of them was a different color.

00:07:10.040 | He shook hands.

00:07:11.040 | He was very friendly, spoke English.

00:07:14.560 | He said that each one of those telephones represented another city in the United States.

00:07:18.400 | This is Chicago, and this is New York.

00:07:20.400 | If I ring, I knew who was calling.

00:07:23.080 | We chatted a while, and he asked me what type of airplanes I had and what experience I had

00:07:29.040 | flying across the U.S. border.

00:07:31.600 | I told him he seemed pleased with it.

00:07:35.600 | He called the lady in, and she went next door.

00:07:38.280 | In came Pablo Escobar, and he introduced me to Pablo Escobar.

00:07:42.040 | He asked the same questions again, and I answered them.

00:07:48.520 | I asked him how much he paid, and he paid $5,000 a kilo to haul it.

00:07:52.480 | I said, "How much you put on the plane?"

00:07:55.600 | He said, "300, 500."

00:07:57.280 | I said, "That's one and a half, two and a half million dollars for an eight-hour trip."

00:08:01.160 | It sounded pretty good to me.

00:08:02.680 | We're talking about cocaine, and we're talking about Colombia.

00:08:06.560 | Colombia and cocaine and Medellín Cartel.

00:08:09.880 | Jorge Ochoa was one of the, what would you say, founding members of the Medellín?

00:08:14.200 | He was probably the brains behind the whole thing.

00:08:16.280 | The brains and spoke good English.

00:08:18.040 | There were nice people.

00:08:20.360 | Really nice people.

00:08:21.360 | Were you scared?

00:08:22.360 | Not at all.

00:08:23.920 | What's wrong with your mind that you weren't scared?

00:08:26.680 | Here's some of the most dangerous men in this world, and you weren't scared?

00:08:30.880 | I knew I was going to do exactly what I said I was going to do.

00:08:34.160 | Mario and the children were down there.

00:08:35.480 | They went down, and they stayed in the hotel, five-star, treated royally on my first load.

00:08:40.160 | They just did it as security to make sure that I wasn't a DEA agent.

00:08:46.560 | I did the first load, and they can say they were hostages, but they really weren't.

00:08:51.240 | It was just insurance.

00:08:53.320 | There was some integrity to the way they operated.

00:08:56.360 | Completely.

00:08:57.360 | I mean, straight up.

00:09:00.240 | The money was ironed and banded, and just right, and the numbers were never once anything

00:09:08.000 | wrong with it.

00:09:09.000 | What would you attribute that honesty to?

00:09:12.120 | In their own moral system, in their own set of rules, why weren't people crossing the

00:09:18.960 | line and shaving off the top and injecting chaos into the system to where it would be

00:09:27.120 | unpredictable and people would be dishonest and greedy and all those kinds of things?

00:09:31.960 | That's true.

00:09:32.960 | Most people are, but there's certain people at the top of the food chain that they don't

00:09:35.920 | need that.

00:09:38.280 | If they're completely honest, then they don't have to think of, remember the lie they told.

00:09:43.560 | Plus, they're just honest to start with.

00:09:46.920 | They're making plenty of money.

00:09:48.400 | They was making as much money as I did.

00:09:50.560 | I'll tell you how that came about.

00:09:54.640 | I understand that 10,000 people were killed every year in Medellín, Colombia.

00:09:59.920 | What they were doing, they didn't have any organization.

00:10:04.880 | If one fellow had 10 kilos and he wanted it shipped to New York, he would tell his friend.

00:10:09.960 | His friend says, "Sure, I'll ship it.

00:10:11.640 | I have a pilot and I'll ship it up."

00:10:13.560 | Then he would look in the newspapers, "Oh, 40 kilos was busted in New Jersey.

00:10:17.120 | I'm so sorry.

00:10:18.480 | Yours got busted."

00:10:19.480 | Bang, bang, he's dead.

00:10:23.280 | Here comes Jorge Ochoa and the three Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar and Gacho.

00:10:29.240 | They decided that we would make an insurance company, that we would charge you $10,000

00:10:35.600 | to take it to your contact in Miami.

00:10:40.080 | If it gets lost anywhere between the time I put it on the airplane or the time you give

00:10:44.680 | it to us and the time we give it to your man, we will replace it in Colombia for you.

00:10:50.600 | There was no way anybody could lose.

00:10:52.760 | I understand they got 100 tons piled up under that insurance program.

00:10:58.040 | I was right there the first day.

00:11:01.080 | I had all the work I could do.

00:11:03.320 | I would land and I'd say, "When do you want me to come back?

00:11:05.920 | We're waiting on you, senor."

00:11:07.480 | Let me ask a difficult question.

00:11:10.640 | Some see Escobar as a brutal murderer and some see him as maybe a Robin Hood-like figure

00:11:17.720 | who helped the poor.

00:11:19.640 | How do you see the man?

00:11:21.040 | Both of them.

00:11:22.320 | I think he started out, to be honest, with helping the poor and then they had a war down

00:11:26.240 | there and they blew up and killed his people.

00:11:29.920 | The country was divided almost equally three ways.

00:11:32.960 | They had the military.

00:11:36.080 | They were just as much into it as anybody.

00:11:38.480 | Then you had the FARC guerrillas.

00:11:40.600 | They had about a third of the country.

00:11:42.840 | Then you had the conchers.

00:11:43.840 | It was like the white farmers.

00:11:46.880 | They're the ones that I was dealing with and they were at war with one another.

00:11:51.080 | If one of them started killing their people, I'll kill some of yours too.

00:11:56.520 | That's how it happened.

00:11:57.520 | Then when I heard about Pablo Escobar blowing up that airliner and killing those women and

00:12:02.040 | children, I was sorry I ever shook his hand.

00:12:05.560 | That's brutal murder.

00:12:06.560 | You would say Escobar is not a good man.

00:12:10.880 | Not at all.

00:12:11.880 | He was terrible.

00:12:12.880 | Now, looking back on it, when I met him, he was good.

00:12:17.040 | Did just exactly what he said he would do.

00:12:19.680 | Would he be a bad man and a man you can trust?

00:12:22.400 | Absolutely, you could trust him, yes.

00:12:28.360 | From your perspective in terms of business, he was reliable.

00:12:32.800 | He was honest, had integrity.

00:12:35.680 | You could work with him and he felt safe.

00:12:39.080 | Completely.

00:12:40.080 | We flew up to his ranch and we brought out motorcycles to start with.

00:12:45.600 | Can you ride a motorcycle?

00:12:46.600 | Of course I can ride a motorcycle.

00:12:48.560 | I took off across the grass and there was a little ditch there.

00:12:52.000 | The front wheel dropped in that thing and I must have slid across that grass 20 feet

00:12:56.480 | before I got stopped.

00:12:57.600 | He almost fell off his bike waiting because they knew what it was going to do.

00:13:02.160 | Then we got on horses and went out there and pretended to round up some cows.

00:13:06.840 | He put a Mac-10 machine gun pistol over my shoulder.

00:13:09.440 | Do you know how to use this?

00:13:10.840 | Well, I never had, but it was all right.

00:13:13.040 | I think it was like, "Okay, you got 10 bodyguards.

00:13:15.960 | What do you need me for?"

00:13:18.200 | That's the kind of time we laughed and talked and drove some cows over the stumps.

00:13:23.040 | You said Jorge Ochoa was perhaps the brains of the Medellin cartel.

00:13:30.440 | What was he like and why do you say he was the brains?

00:13:35.320 | He was a gentleman.

00:13:37.520 | I suppose he shipped, no telling how many more times of cocaine than Pablo did.

00:13:43.080 | Him and his brothers, you could tell by the, they had on each load, they was in duffel

00:13:48.560 | bags and it was big football shaped, fluffy stuff made with ether.

00:13:56.480 | They would have three horns on it or a rattlesnake or four X's on each bag.

00:14:02.160 | You kind of got to knowing which was which and they shipped a lot.

00:14:08.320 | He was just a gentleman.

00:14:09.320 | I took the family, we went one weekend to his ranch or his palacio place out near Barranquilla

00:14:17.480 | and oh, he just treated the family.

00:14:20.560 | His family had, his younger brother made a bullfight and we had skiing and little airplanes

00:14:29.400 | on floats on the water.

00:14:32.040 | It was really nice and he was really nice.

00:14:36.440 | How do you make sense of the tension that a man could be a gentleman, could have integrity

00:14:42.800 | but also be a murderer?

00:14:44.880 | Well murder is a stronger word than killing.

00:14:50.200 | Can you explain the line, the gray area we're talking about?

00:14:54.480 | I mean I've just talking with Jocko Willink and we talked a lot about killing in the context

00:15:00.320 | of military conflict and the context of war.

00:15:05.600 | So there, there's a line between murder and killing that you can draw.

00:15:10.200 | What's the line that you're referring to?

00:15:12.080 | It's something similar.

00:15:13.640 | If people are shooting at you and you shoot back and kill him, that's not murder whatsoever.

00:15:19.320 | He's trying to get away or out of the situation.

00:15:22.440 | But if some woman don't pay you and you send a hit man over to kill her and her children,

00:15:29.480 | that's murder.

00:15:30.480 | That's murder.

00:15:31.480 | Was Jorge involved in those kinds of things?

00:15:33.280 | I don't think so at all.

00:15:34.880 | I mean he was just such a gentleman.

00:15:36.520 | He had a restaurant before and he was just smart.

00:15:39.880 | I understand that the first 10 kilos he sold, he was sitting on a motorcycle in the sidelines

00:15:46.120 | in a parking lot and when the DEA come in, he sped away.

00:15:49.600 | So he didn't come back to America.

00:15:51.320 | He was just smart.

00:15:52.320 | Some people just are savvy.

00:15:54.040 | He was such a gentleman and the whole family, the mother and the father, the two brothers,

00:15:58.800 | their sister, I was there when she was kidnapped.

00:16:01.760 | Finally, he kidnapped I guess 100 liters of the fork and said, "All right, if she don't

00:16:10.800 | come back, none of these are going to come back."

00:16:13.440 | So they made a deal.

00:16:15.520 | Is there something you can say about the power structure, the hierarchy of the Medellin cartel

00:16:20.240 | that you interacted with?

00:16:23.000 | Was it a dictatorship where Pablo ran everything?

00:16:26.160 | Was there a bunch of power centers?

00:16:28.680 | Was it like a company where you have CEO, CTO kind of thing and then there's like managers

00:16:33.960 | and all those kinds of things?

00:16:37.360 | How did it run from a leadership perspective?

00:16:40.360 | I understand that about five of them got together and made this, I would call it an insurance

00:16:45.360 | company, now known as the Medellin cartel.

00:16:50.640 | I didn't see any difference.

00:16:51.800 | Each one of them had their own business and their people from the jungle or wherever made

00:16:59.280 | the cocaine gave it to them and they shipped it.

00:17:02.440 | So it didn't seem to be any power play between them at all.

00:17:07.740 | But my main contact was Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar was right there and I saw plenty of

00:17:14.160 | stuff for him too.

00:17:16.080 | It's strange that they didn't betray each other regularly.

00:17:20.760 | You know, greed makes men betray each other.

00:17:25.280 | How do you explain that?

00:17:27.560 | How much betrayal did you see?

00:17:29.320 | I didn't see any.

00:17:31.120 | Absolutely none.

00:17:33.200 | If they shipped his hundred kilos, he got paid for it.

00:17:36.000 | If the other one shipped his, I'm sure they got paid for it.

00:17:40.040 | How do you explain that?

00:17:41.040 | Well, there was no need to.

00:17:43.520 | The money was just unbelievable.

00:17:44.720 | You think about 500 kilos in the plane at $50,000 a kilo at the time.

00:17:53.920 | And they paid $5,000 to ship it.

00:17:57.560 | And they made 5,000 without even touching it.

00:18:00.600 | They just had somebody to load it on through the airplane.

00:18:03.880 | I gave it to their man in Miami.

00:18:05.720 | They gave it to whoever it belonged to by the marks on the duffel bags.

00:18:11.040 | So they was making just untold millions.

00:18:14.600 | Just no reason.

00:18:16.920 | But greed can blind men.

00:18:21.160 | It's still strange to me that there was not more betrayal.

00:18:26.960 | It speaks to something else perhaps that's bigger than money.

00:18:33.280 | Maybe not.

00:18:34.360 | But it seems like just like in the casino, like you mentioned, we get accustomed to whatever

00:18:41.020 | level of money we have, we get accustomed very quickly.

00:18:44.760 | And then there's a tension that's natural between human beings.

00:18:49.280 | And when that tension combined with money, combined with power, combined with, like you

00:18:55.640 | mentioned, beautiful women and a bit of violence, it seems that betrayal should be commonplace.

00:19:03.760 | But it's not.

00:19:05.460 | It wasn't.

00:19:06.460 | Not at all.

00:19:07.460 | A couple of years later, I don't know if he betrayed anybody, but he started that.

00:19:10.920 | He was running cocaine through the Bahamas.

00:19:12.720 | And he had the island.

00:19:14.160 | I didn't go.

00:19:15.160 | I was offered to fly with a DC-3 with that, but I didn't like it.

00:19:18.720 | So I had my route through the oil wells in Louisiana.

00:19:22.200 | And so I didn't want to change.

00:19:24.760 | But he talked a lot.

00:19:26.320 | And I don't know if he betrayed, but they didn't like him.

00:19:29.040 | Yeah.

00:19:30.040 | So as you expand, there could be tensions that lead to conflict.

00:19:36.080 | Louisiana was, like you said, an ultra-violent place.

00:19:40.580 | How did you survive?

00:19:42.060 | Who protected you?

00:19:43.420 | I was a hero.

00:19:44.940 | They liked me.

00:19:45.940 | I mean, I was just treated royally.

00:19:47.580 | All I did, I would come over El Banco.

00:19:49.740 | There's a radio station at the forks of the Magdalena River.

00:19:52.940 | I believe it was 720, if I remember right, on the AM.

00:19:57.260 | And I'd fly in at 10,000 feet, and I'd see below me there'd be a Cessna.

00:20:01.580 | And I'd wiggle my wings, and he'd wiggle his, and I'd fall in behind him, and we might go

00:20:05.140 | 100, 200 miles.

00:20:06.140 | And I'd land on some jungle strip or some banana plantation.

00:20:12.060 | And they'd fuel me up.

00:20:13.420 | I could eat steak.

00:20:15.020 | In the night, it was just like treated royally.

00:20:17.660 | And I mean, take off the next morning, whenever I wanted to.

00:20:21.020 | It was just like that was protected.

00:20:23.060 | And I was an honored guest.

00:20:26.100 | It wasn't anything like in that movie, putting a gun to your head and taking your sunglasses

00:20:30.780 | and betting.

00:20:32.220 | One time I complained to Jorge Ochoa that the runway was pretty short that they were

00:20:37.740 | using.

00:20:38.740 | And I went back down there, and it looked like Los Angeles International.

00:20:41.020 | They had bulldozers in there.

00:20:42.380 | They had that thing 5,000 feet long.

00:20:44.980 | Just like, just the next week, it was all done.

00:20:47.540 | The jungle was gone, and clay put up there.

00:20:50.560 | And all the while, you were not afraid.

00:20:53.340 | You were treated like a royalty.

00:20:54.860 | Yes, there I was.

00:20:56.420 | I was afraid when I landed in the United States.

00:20:58.860 | So maybe let's go back to the beginning.

00:21:01.740 | What was the first time you flew an airplane with drugs on it?

00:21:05.740 | Tell me the story of the first time you smuggled drugs.

00:21:08.860 | All right.

00:21:09.860 | I flew down to Jalapa Vera cruise with a Cessna 182.

00:21:16.540 | And we landed at the town.

00:21:18.700 | It was a lovely town.

00:21:19.700 | It was just an old town, looked like Bible times.

00:21:22.980 | Women were washing their clothes in the streets with stone basins and the stream running through.

00:21:27.620 | I just was just dumbstruck.

00:21:29.780 | It was just so pretty.

00:21:30.780 | And I went in a church, in a Catholic church, and it had the Stations of the Cross all carved

00:21:35.500 | magnificent.

00:21:36.500 | I'd never seen that.

00:21:38.220 | And I come home and told Marie about that.

00:21:39.820 | That just almost brought tears to my eyes.

00:21:41.660 | It was so beautiful.

00:21:43.140 | And three o'clock the next morning, I went out to the airport and taxied down to the

00:21:46.500 | taxiway, and there was a guard came out and wanted to know what I was doing.

00:21:52.340 | And I pulled out.

00:21:53.340 | I was on the fire department out in Redondo Beach, California.

00:21:56.580 | So I pulled out my wallet, and it was the fire department badge.

00:22:00.220 | And oh, he shook my hand and was so glad.

00:22:03.980 | So I taxied on down there, and we loaded up about 400 pounds in the plane.

00:22:07.780 | And I came on back, and I was running the headwinds more than I thought.

00:22:12.220 | And I landed on a little strip.

00:22:14.660 | You're talking about on the way back?

00:22:16.580 | On the way back, on the way north after we loaded up early in the morning.

00:22:20.100 | And that's the only time I ever got vertigo.

00:22:22.660 | The mountains were coming down at a 30 or 40 degree angle, and the Milky Way was overhead.

00:22:28.340 | And somehow I wanted that airplane to be level with the stars.

00:22:31.820 | And it got me.

00:22:32.820 | And it's a phenomenal pile of vertigo.

00:22:35.220 | It's the only time I ever had it was on that load.

00:22:37.860 | So anyway, the wind was on the nose of that system.

00:22:40.060 | I wasn't going to make it to the dry lake where I had fuel.

00:22:43.540 | So I landed on a little bitty strip, and there was a little house.

00:22:46.380 | It was caved in, and it was a little boy named Lazarus, about six or seven years old.

00:22:50.980 | And he was herding some goats.

00:22:52.800 | So we put the marijuana in that house, and the man stayed with it while I flew into some

00:22:56.680 | town and got fuel and came back.

00:22:58.900 | We sat down with the lunch that I brought back, and little Lazarus sat there and ate

00:23:02.100 | with us.

00:23:03.100 | And we had a good time.

00:23:04.100 | We loaded on back and came home.

00:23:05.100 | Oh, wow.

00:23:06.100 | I wonder where he is now.

00:23:07.100 | He is.

00:23:08.100 | So what was it like to fly?

00:23:12.500 | Maybe describe the details of do you have to fly low?

00:23:17.700 | Is there details that are unique to this experience of flying an airplane with drugs on it, on

00:23:23.820 | board?

00:23:24.820 | All right.

00:23:25.820 | Well, one of the mistakes that just thousands, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of pilots

00:23:29.020 | make, they don't stop at the border going down and get their permit.

00:23:33.500 | Once you get a permit to be in Mexico, you've got it for six months.

00:23:37.820 | You can go anywhere, any fishing village, any little town, any little place, show them

00:23:42.100 | this and you're welcome.

00:23:43.100 | If you don't have that, you go straight to jail.

00:23:46.500 | So you go down there and you think, "Okay, they're going to have fuel for me to come

00:23:49.140 | back and so forth."

00:23:50.140 | Oh, sorry, senor.

00:23:51.140 | That had a rusty leak in it.

00:23:53.580 | We don't have any.

00:23:54.580 | Well, you better be able to go to town and get it.

00:23:57.300 | So that's what I did.

00:23:58.940 | And when I was coming back for several years, I would fly up at Mexicali and cross the border

00:24:06.620 | right at Calexico.

00:24:08.220 | I would act like I was landing on the Calexico side just after dark.

00:24:11.540 | And then I'd zip across the border and go over to the Salton Sea and go below sea level

00:24:16.380 | a hundred and something feet, I believe 170 feet, and come on up and go out there above

00:24:21.020 | Palm Springs and land out in 29 Palms in the desert and put my stuff under a Joshua tree

00:24:26.500 | and fly into town and get my pickup and go on back out and get it.

00:24:29.940 | And that was fun.

00:24:31.460 | And then it got really dangerous.

00:24:32.820 | They had Operation Starlight, I believe was the name of it.

00:24:36.140 | And they caught a lot of pilots coming across the border.

00:24:39.500 | So I changed it.

00:24:40.500 | And by that time, I was flying bigger planes.

00:24:42.100 | I was flying Beach 18s.

00:24:44.900 | And I would refuel in Mulaje halfway down on Baja Peninsula.

00:24:50.700 | And then over in the middle, 20 miles from the nearest road was a goat ranch where they

00:24:55.740 | milk goats and made cheese.

00:24:58.700 | And I would go there and unload the load coming up out of anywhere in southern Mexico.

00:25:03.140 | And I would land there and a guy named Juan would put the marijuana under the trees and

00:25:09.700 | I'd fly into Mulaje and they'd wash my plane and gas it up.

00:25:13.940 | And I'd eat lunch and rent a room for a few hours and take a nap and a shower and then

00:25:18.540 | go back in the afternoon and fill up.

00:25:20.780 | And then I would go northwest out of there and fly 200 miles off the coast of the island

00:25:25.620 | of Guadalupe.

00:25:27.120 | And from there, I would fly on a more northwestern heading about 300 miles out over the Pacific.

00:25:32.860 | And then I would come in behind the Santa Barbara Islands down low and then I'd come

00:25:36.500 | up and go out in the desert land.

00:25:39.180 | And I did that for the rest of the marijuana trips.

00:25:43.260 | What was the hardest part about flying those routes?

00:25:49.100 | The hardest part was getting good marijuana.

00:25:51.300 | So the hardest part isn't the flying?

00:25:54.540 | No, it's the flying.

00:25:55.540 | It's just like driving your car down.

00:25:57.180 | But then I had people that would bring me on trips that were just unworthy of an airplane.

00:26:02.500 | When I'd land on a highway.

00:26:05.020 | And in the rainy season, I would come back to land again and the guy wouldn't think about

00:26:11.060 | it and he'd have like little heels on both sides and the wings were out there.

00:26:15.460 | The grass and the weeds would grow up and it sounded like tearing the airplane apart

00:26:20.780 | when those wings hit, mowing the grass down both shoulders of the airplane.

00:26:25.300 | The weeds would grow up high in the tropics.

00:26:27.540 | So some of that stuff was bad.

00:26:29.220 | Oh, getting bad gasoline and telling me that land here in the light and knock the wheels

00:26:35.300 | off when you land.

00:26:36.580 | Oh, you should have landed a little further up here, senor, they ditched down.

00:26:40.380 | Yeah.

00:26:41.380 | That sort of thing.

00:26:42.380 | What was it like landing on a highway?

00:26:44.980 | And when did you have to land on the highway?

00:26:46.940 | I landed on the highway most of my life, most of the times.

00:26:50.200 | In Mexico, first time I went down, there was a place called Pichulingui.

00:26:53.700 | It had a 900 foot strip and I would fly down and I'd carry gasoline with me and Mari and

00:27:02.180 | I would go to the grocery store and buy all kinds of little goodies and candies and toys

00:27:06.300 | to bring to the children.

00:27:08.620 | And that sand strip in the bend of a river was just too short to take off of the load.

00:27:15.900 | So there was a young man there named Pedro, must have weighed much over 100, maybe 120

00:27:20.260 | pounds.

00:27:21.260 | And he'd get in a plane with me.

00:27:23.100 | And he'd direct me 20, 30, 40 miles away to a highway.

00:27:28.260 | And the people walking and the people would pull out in a two ton truck with a machine

00:27:32.740 | gun on it and a bunch of guys with arms and they'd block the road.

00:27:37.180 | And then another one would block it up about a mile away and I'd land right over that truck.

00:27:40.860 | And they'd load me up and it looked like a bucket brigade with the marijuana coming.

00:27:44.540 | I'd shake hands with all of them.

00:27:45.900 | And I'd take off right over the other trucks.

00:27:48.380 | And sometimes maybe 20, 30, 40 cars lined up.

00:27:51.340 | One time I remember a patrol car, a highway patrol car.

00:27:55.500 | He didn't have his lights on.

00:27:56.500 | I took off right over him.

00:27:58.180 | And then when I started flying to Louisiana, the bridge over the Mississippi River, there

00:28:02.940 | were several contractors that went broke.

00:28:05.000 | And that thing was out for years.

00:28:07.580 | And about five miles from the river was flashing red lights and a detour.

00:28:13.120 | And then the swamp on both sides of it and the middle of it was growing up with 20 feet

00:28:16.340 | trees.

00:28:17.460 | And that was like an international runway from anywhere in the world.

00:28:22.780 | So I landed on that and over and over those red lights, just like the end of a runway.

00:28:26.500 | And then the next morning we'd go out there and scrub the marks off the highway where

00:28:30.140 | I'd landed before daylight.

00:28:33.300 | Wow.

00:28:34.740 | Let's go to somebody you've known well, somebody who's also a drug smuggler is Barry Seal.

00:28:42.940 | Who is Barry Seal?

00:28:44.800 | How did you meet him?

00:28:45.800 | Barry Seal is a friend of mine.

00:28:50.380 | Mari and I and the children went down in Honduras and we went up Lake Azul, I believe it was,

00:28:57.100 | and we were looking at a ranch to buy.

00:28:58.740 | I was looking for something in Central America where I'd have a halfway place.

00:29:02.660 | Oh, it was lovely.

00:29:04.220 | We stayed up there for some days and our clothes got muddy and we went in the river and all

00:29:07.860 | kind of thing.

00:29:08.860 | So we got to San Pedro Sula and we was going back to New Orleans.

00:29:14.020 | So we went to the cleaners to get our clothes and most all of them was in there.

00:29:19.820 | And they go, "Oh, senor, they'll be ready tomorrow morning.

00:29:22.340 | We're not ready now."

00:29:23.340 | Well, the plane leaves at nine o'clock or whatever.

00:29:27.600 | So I told Mari for her and the children to go into the airport because it'd be easier

00:29:32.540 | for one on a standby flight.

00:29:35.400 | So I went to the laundromat for the clothes and they were ready and there was a pile of

00:29:41.300 | them.

00:29:42.300 | So I went and got in a taxi and the old taxi was driving with it and I'd give him $100

00:29:45.660 | to go faster and he just blew his horn more rapid.

00:29:52.020 | We got to the airport and I jumped out and ran around on the tarmac and here's a brand

00:29:56.340 | new 727 taxiing out.

00:29:59.100 | Oh, no.

00:30:01.340 | So I'm waving to the pilot and he's a young fellow.

00:30:04.060 | He waves back.

00:30:05.900 | Then I see Mari's face in the cockpit and the nose goes down where he puts on brakes

00:30:09.900 | and he laughs and he puts some stairwell out.

00:30:12.660 | And I run for the stairwell and he pulls it back up and goes like a hitchhiker going to

00:30:16.100 | pick you up and go again.

00:30:18.980 | Then he put it out and I got on and the whole crowd clapped and I'm coming home with that

00:30:22.980 | load of clothes.

00:30:23.980 | So I go way down in the middle and the plane's full and Mari, my daughter, is about nine

00:30:31.300 | years old then.

00:30:32.940 | And she was sitting in the middle and by the window was Barry Seal.

00:30:35.580 | Of course, I didn't know it.

00:30:36.940 | I sat in the middle and we took off and the wheels come up with clunk.

00:30:42.300 | Then I got up about 5,000 feet and we had a little clunk.

00:30:45.460 | And she said, "What was that, Daddy?"

00:30:46.460 | I said, "He just turned on his autopilot."

00:30:49.340 | That fellow reached over and I looked at him.

00:30:50.980 | I said, "He looks like CIA or FBI, something.

00:30:55.020 | He ain't supposed to be here."

00:30:56.660 | Clear blue eyes, gentleman looking man.

00:30:59.500 | And he said, "You fly these things?"

00:31:01.900 | I said, "I got a few hours, mister."

00:31:03.300 | He said, "I'll fly them too or something."

00:31:04.900 | He said, "My name's Barry Seal."

00:31:06.260 | He reached over near him and shook hands.

00:31:08.580 | And we got to talking and I thought, "There's no choice or seats on this.

00:31:13.620 | It's just open seating, but I don't believe him one bit."

00:31:18.660 | And he started talking about he just got out of jail that morning, just got out of prison.

00:31:22.380 | And I said, "Uh-huh."

00:31:26.780 | And he told me that he'd been a pilot with the TWA and this and other.

00:31:31.460 | And he told me what he was for.

00:31:33.940 | So we had a nice conversation for a couple of hours in New Orleans.

00:31:37.220 | I didn't believe him.

00:31:39.300 | So he got off in front of us and what a crowd of people to meet him.

00:31:44.180 | An old mother and a wife and little children hanging on to him, crying and hugging and

00:31:48.700 | kissing him.

00:31:49.700 | I said, "He was telling the truth."

00:31:53.580 | So I reached over and gave him a little piece of paper.

00:31:56.100 | I had him already write it out with our address.

00:31:57.860 | I said, "Barry, I might have some work for you."

00:31:59.580 | What was he in jail for?

00:32:01.540 | He got caught with 100 kilos of cocaine in a small plane.

00:32:05.980 | And so he served a year.

00:32:07.940 | And that was from Colombia?

00:32:10.020 | I don't know where it come from.

00:32:11.220 | He got caught in Honduras, probably refueling.

00:32:14.340 | But he'd been in prison down there before for bringing explosives to the Cuban Contras.

00:32:21.580 | And he lost his job with the airlines.

00:32:23.740 | And then later on, I found out he was ex-CIA and George Bush Sr.'s protege and had a thousand

00:32:29.420 | parachute jumps and was there.

00:32:32.460 | He was a hot shot, Bob.

00:32:35.020 | There's a million questions I want to ask here.

00:32:37.540 | But maybe can we linger on it a little bit longer?

00:32:41.340 | What was your relationship with him like?

00:32:45.500 | You were a drug smuggler.

00:32:47.180 | He's a drug smuggler.

00:32:50.500 | Your friends, how often do you guys talk?

00:32:53.700 | How often do you work together?

00:32:56.660 | What was the relationship like?

00:32:57.820 | Well, I'll back up and just finish where I started off there.

00:33:01.460 | I gave him the things, "Barry, I may have some work for you.

00:33:03.620 | I know I got some work for you."

00:33:05.540 | And I said, "Come out to Santa Barbara."

00:33:08.780 | And so, I don't know, a week or two later, he flew out and went to our house and stayed

00:33:12.860 | with us a couple of days.

00:33:14.460 | And I had an almost brand new Aero Commander 690B.

00:33:18.580 | That thing was a turboprop, and it was hot.

00:33:20.220 | It was the hottest thing I'd ever had.

00:33:22.740 | So I said, "Let's go, Barry.

00:33:24.060 | Let's see what you can do."

00:33:26.460 | And he said, "I'm sorry I said that.

00:33:28.020 | We got about 10,000 feet."

00:33:30.300 | And he was like one of them Blue Angel pilots.

00:33:32.300 | He wrung that thing out.

00:33:33.700 | And I said, "That's enough."

00:33:35.060 | And then he did a falling leaf.

00:33:38.260 | That's where you cut the engines and the plane falls from side to side.

00:33:41.180 | And I saw Bob Hoover do that in an air show once, and that's the only person I ever saw

00:33:44.860 | do it.

00:33:45.860 | And my hand was white knuckle hanging onto the seat.

00:33:49.420 | You shut off the engine?

00:33:50.420 | Yeah, he shut off the engines and landed flying side by side like this.

00:33:54.700 | How do you explain that?

00:33:55.980 | Was he just a wild man, or was he sufficiently skilled to wear it?

00:34:00.540 | He was sufficiently skilled.

00:34:02.100 | Absolutely.

00:34:03.100 | He knew what he was doing.

00:34:05.060 | I can get a plane from one spot to another, and I guess I'm known as a good pilot.

00:34:08.220 | But that guy, it was aerobatic.

00:34:13.140 | So anyway, he stayed with us a couple of days, and then I told him, I said, "This plane needs

00:34:16.940 | tanking."

00:34:17.940 | I said, "I got some work down in Columbia.

00:34:20.180 | It needs to come back to Louisiana, and I need 2,500-mile range."

00:34:24.020 | He said, "I got somebody in Arkansas to do that and keep the mouth shut."

00:34:27.660 | So I gave him $10,000, and he flew away.

00:34:30.820 | And in a few days, he called me and said, "Come to my house in Baton Rouge."

00:34:35.780 | So I went out to his house in Baton Rouge, and I stayed with him for a few days.

00:34:39.580 | And that plane was tanked, I mean, beautiful from stem to stern.

00:34:43.540 | I could went from Bolivia to Canada with it.

00:34:47.540 | So then I hired him to fly, and he was funny.

00:34:52.740 | I paid him $1 million a trip.

00:34:54.420 | I paid him $2,000 a kilo, so about a million-dollar trip.

00:34:57.940 | And I didn't get paid until the people received it.

00:35:01.700 | They had to ship it to Chicago and New York, and then the money come back.

00:35:05.100 | So it was a couple of two or three-week pipeline.

00:35:08.020 | Well I always had to pay him before he'd go again.

00:35:11.780 | And he'd bellyache.

00:35:12.780 | I mean, he'd moan and groan.

00:35:15.580 | So one time I gave him $1 million, and I put it in a box real nice.

00:35:21.700 | So how big is a box that contains a million dollars?

00:35:24.020 | So we're talking about $100 bills?

00:35:25.020 | $100.

00:35:26.020 | It's not very big.

00:35:27.020 | You can put it in a large briefcase.

00:35:29.580 | It weighs exactly 10 kilos.

00:35:32.500 | Each bill weighs a gram, so you can weigh your money and almost get it exactly right.

00:35:36.740 | 20-something pounds is a million dollars.

00:35:39.020 | 22 pounds.

00:35:40.020 | 22 pounds.

00:35:41.020 | $100 bills.

00:35:42.020 | But in $1 bills, it's one ton, 2,200 pounds.

00:35:48.180 | We didn't even accept them.

00:35:49.580 | Were you the one that introduced Barry Seale to Pablo Escobar?

00:35:53.460 | No.

00:35:54.540 | I didn't introduce him at all.

00:35:57.340 | And our deal was that you don't meet my people.

00:36:00.260 | I mean, we just kind of crossed you working for me to fly the airplanes.

00:36:03.620 | So he wanted these Panther conversions, cost $400,000 each, with a storm scope and radar.

00:36:09.260 | So I bought anything he wanted.

00:36:11.500 | What's that mean, sorry to interrupt?

00:36:13.060 | Panther conversions?

00:36:14.660 | Panther conversion was these people called Panther.

00:36:18.380 | They took everything out from the firewall, the instruments and all, and converted them

00:36:22.740 | and put Q-tip propellers on them, full-bladed, and very quiet.

00:36:27.100 | And the CIA developed those in Southeast Asia for running behind the lines.

00:36:31.940 | And that's where Barry had flown those things, so he knew about them.

00:36:35.180 | So that's what he wanted, and that's what we got him.

00:36:38.380 | How does that connect to Pablo?

00:36:40.060 | And so he worked for you, and you got those upgrades.

00:36:42.780 | I think he flew about 30 loads for me, and then I got arrested for everything in the

00:36:48.220 | world.

00:36:49.220 | I got 35 years sentence.

00:36:51.180 | But let me back up a little bit.

00:36:52.700 | Barry was our friend, Mari and I, both friend.

00:36:57.380 | We should pause real quick and say Mari is your wife, and hopefully she'll convince her

00:37:05.060 | to join us in a little bit.

00:37:08.060 | She's the love of your life, and she weaves in and out of many of these stories that you

00:37:12.940 | tell.

00:37:13.940 | Yes, she was there.

00:37:15.380 | She was behind the scenes, but I kept her out of it completely.

00:37:19.060 | And then also you mentioned Mariam as your daughter.

00:37:22.180 | Yes.

00:37:23.180 | Our son was a baby, and I remember we went out to La Festival, was my favorite restaurant

00:37:28.500 | in Carl Gables.

00:37:29.500 | Oh, God, it was good.

00:37:31.700 | And Barry knew about it.

00:37:32.900 | Anyhow, we went out to dinner, and so we came back and there was no rooms.

00:37:38.260 | So Barry, well, spend the night with us.

00:37:40.540 | So he goes to our hotel room with us, and we got two big beds in the Omni Hotel.

00:37:45.900 | And he lays over there and gets down to his striped undershorts and his T-shirt, and he

00:37:50.500 | puts the baby up on his belly and gives him the bottle and says, "Mm, ain't that good,

00:37:54.380 | Red?

00:37:55.380 | Oh, my, my."

00:37:56.380 | And he just feeds the baby.

00:37:57.380 | We laugh and talk.

00:37:58.380 | And that's how close we were that we could all stay in a hotel room together.

00:38:03.420 | And would you say he's a good man?

00:38:05.020 | A wonderful man.

00:38:06.420 | A gentleman, southern gentleman.

00:38:09.340 | He's looked after his mother, his family, everybody around him.

00:38:13.300 | Everybody loved Barry.

00:38:14.300 | He just had a little smile on his face always.

00:38:18.340 | So you got arrested, and then what happened to Barry?

00:38:21.700 | Well, Barry knew the people that unloaded, of course.

00:38:26.900 | He sent the cars down and all that.

00:38:28.460 | So he met the unloader, a guy named Lito, Luis Carlos Bustamante, a Venezuelan.

00:38:35.340 | So he just kept on flying.

00:38:37.660 | But he, I believe, had three of my airplanes at $400,000 a piece, and they owed me some

00:38:42.660 | money.

00:38:43.660 | Well, he collected a lot of that and gave Mari the money and put it in his safe and

00:38:47.260 | took her to his house and all after I got arrested, sent a lawyer in.

00:38:50.540 | He got me the best lawyer in the country, Albert Krieger.

00:38:53.540 | He was head of the defense team for all of America.

00:38:57.180 | Wonderful man.

00:38:59.060 | Can you tell the story of the months that led up to Barry's assassination?

00:39:06.980 | What did you know?

00:39:07.980 | What did you sense?

00:39:08.980 | What did you think?

00:39:09.980 | Okay.

00:39:10.980 | When I got out of prison, I hadn't been out long, I was eating breakfast, and there was

00:39:14.820 | Ronald Reagan's face right in the television.

00:39:18.500 | We have absolute proof that the communist Sandinista government is in the cocaine running

00:39:23.620 | business.

00:39:24.900 | And there was that fat lady, the C-126, on the runway with the belly in, and I thought,

00:39:31.980 | "Oh, God, he had done it."

00:39:34.780 | I had heard that Barry might have been working with him.

00:39:38.700 | So it wasn't long before-

00:39:39.700 | Working with-

00:39:40.700 | With the DEA or whoever, he was no longer on our side.

00:39:46.420 | Can you clarify how you got that from the Reagan making a statement about, "We've heard-"?

00:39:51.980 | Okay, there was his plane.

00:39:54.100 | There was Barry's plane.

00:39:56.420 | On the way north, we could stop in Nicaraguan land on a military base or on a base that

00:40:01.620 | they used as crop dusters and all, and refuel.

00:40:05.380 | And so that shortened our trip, we go further into the jungle and come up, and that was

00:40:08.700 | what Pablo Escobar and Ochoa and them, and they had to- they was associates with the

00:40:13.060 | people in Nicaragua.

00:40:15.660 | So Barry was- if that plane was there, that means Barry was feeding the DEA information.

00:40:22.820 | He was working with them at that time.

00:40:24.520 | But let me back up a little bit.

00:40:26.380 | When I was flying, and I told Barry we would refuel in a train's airplane, the loads in

00:40:32.140 | Belize where I had a spot up there.

00:40:35.300 | And then that's when they told me we can refuel in Nicaragua, and then you fly all the way,

00:40:42.700 | and Barry couldn't believe it.

00:40:44.580 | He says, "All right, but I wanted to land.

00:40:46.100 | I had a place in Louisiana for $10,000 that I could unload, and the sheriff and all of

00:40:51.580 | them was paid off."

00:40:53.300 | And he said, "No, no, no.

00:40:56.260 | I can't get caught in Mena, Arkansas."

00:40:58.180 | I said, "What do you mean you can't get caught in Mena, Arkansas?

00:41:01.060 | You get caught anywhere."

00:41:02.060 | He said, "I can't, but it's going to cost you $50,000 every time my wheels touch the

00:41:07.860 | ground."

00:41:08.860 | Why- can you explain why he can't get caught in Mena, Arkansas?

00:41:13.140 | He said he was hooked up with them at the very top, and he even said, "I'm going to

00:41:17.020 | have dinner with the governor tonight."

00:41:19.940 | That's- at that time-

00:41:20.940 | So Mena, Arkansas-

00:41:21.940 | Mr. Bill Clinton.

00:41:22.940 | Undoubtedly.

00:41:24.940 | And it's like, "Did Bill Clinton- did you give him any money?"

00:41:27.860 | And I said, "No, I never gave the man any money."

00:41:30.500 | But it was like the money that I had that went to Grand Cayman Islands.

00:41:32.980 | And I told my lawyer, I said, "I never touched that money."

00:41:35.980 | He said, "You don't have to fondle it to be guilty."

00:41:39.060 | So-

00:41:40.060 | So what- I mean, there's a lot of conspiracy theories around the relationship between Barry

00:41:45.220 | Seale and the Clintons.

00:41:46.900 | Absolutely.

00:41:47.900 | What evidence do we have?

00:41:50.980 | What would you say from your best understanding of what was the relationship between Bill

00:41:57.540 | Clinton and Barry Seale?

00:41:59.860 | Barry said- and he knew that he couldn't get caught in Mena, Arkansas.

00:42:04.660 | And when that movie was going to come out and be called Mena, somebody stopped it.

00:42:09.780 | I mean, they stopped it dead in the tracks for two or three years, and the producer even

00:42:13.220 | quit.

00:42:14.220 | You mean the American Made with Tom Cruise movie?

00:42:16.460 | It was an American-

00:42:17.460 | It was going to be called Mena?

00:42:18.460 | It was going to be the name that was written and produced in Mena.

00:42:21.980 | And waiting on Hillary to be elected, they would not let that movie out.

00:42:28.060 | And that movie was changed drastically.

00:42:30.180 | But to push back on that, that doesn't mean there's truth there.

00:42:33.500 | That means they were worried about the power of the conspiracy theory, which stuck.

00:42:38.980 | Exactly.

00:42:39.980 | I don't know.

00:42:41.660 | I mean, some conspiracy theories, just because they're popular, doesn't mean they're true.

00:42:47.580 | And ones that- but it also doesn't mean they're not true.

00:42:51.420 | And there's ones that are not very popular that could be true.

00:42:54.220 | But that one really stuck.

00:42:56.980 | I mean, what's your sense?

00:42:59.700 | Well, I paid one and a half million dollars for Barry to land at Mena, Arkansas.

00:43:03.940 | So I was pretty well assured that he couldn't get caught.

00:43:08.940 | And I said, "Well, I can't get caught in Columbia.

00:43:10.980 | We can't get caught in Nicaragua.

00:43:12.180 | I guess we got a license."

00:43:15.060 | We went for it.

00:43:16.060 | When you say, "I can't get caught," just to clarify, there's a sense where this is a safe

00:43:20.620 | place to land.

00:43:21.900 | Yes.

00:43:22.900 | Like, completely safe.

00:43:23.980 | So you don't think he was referring to some kind of, you know, like my grandfather who

00:43:31.580 | fought in World War II would talk about bullets can't hit him.

00:43:35.900 | So it's almost like believing-

00:43:38.500 | No, that wasn't.

00:43:39.500 | He was taking that $50,000 and giving it to somebody.

00:43:41.780 | To somebody.

00:43:42.780 | And Barry was honest, so he wasn't just taking it from me because he was making a million

00:43:46.260 | dollars and he didn't care for the $50,000.

00:43:49.860 | Oh, man.

00:43:51.180 | Taking the story forward, the months leading up to his assassination, what do you understand?

00:43:59.060 | Why he was assassinated?

00:44:00.060 | Who were the players involved?

00:44:05.180 | Maybe could you have stopped it?

00:44:06.980 | Well, I'll tell you, after I saw Reagan's face on the television saying, "We have the

00:44:12.340 | absolute proof," the phone rang.

00:44:15.220 | And it was Barry.

00:44:16.220 | I hadn't heard from him in a couple years.

00:44:18.740 | He said, "I'm coming out tonight, Roger."

00:44:20.180 | And I, "Oh, boy."

00:44:23.980 | So he came out.

00:44:25.980 | He said, "I'll meet you in this French restaurant.

00:44:28.260 | I don't even know it in Santa Barbara."

00:44:30.420 | And I walked in.

00:44:31.420 | There's about 20 or 30 people in there.

00:44:32.980 | And they was all 30, 40 years old, women with plastic or leather skirts and men in their

00:44:39.940 | blue jeans.

00:44:40.940 | And I looked around and Barry was at the back.

00:44:42.740 | He was leaned up and he'd gained weight.

00:44:45.220 | And I walked up and I said, "Barry, are you wired?"

00:44:47.820 | He said, "No."

00:44:48.820 | I said, "Well, I'm not going to talk to these DE agents."

00:44:51.540 | He said, "Every one of them."

00:44:55.100 | So-

00:44:56.100 | Oh, with jeans and skirts.

00:44:58.580 | I like it.

00:44:59.580 | Oh, boy.

00:45:00.580 | I said, "Well, Barry, I'm going to sit here and you just talk to me, buddy, and tell me

00:45:03.820 | what's on your mind."

00:45:04.820 | And he sat there and he just went to talking.

00:45:07.460 | And he told me about he was left holding a bag and that-

00:45:13.540 | What do you mean by that?

00:45:14.540 | Like that nobody's supported him?

00:45:16.820 | Nobody helped him out?

00:45:17.820 | Well, I think that's something or another.

00:45:18.820 | He was, and I don't know this.

00:45:21.140 | I mean, this is just what happened, putting it all together, that he had some CIA buddies

00:45:27.540 | that was pretending, "We're going to supply all over North with arms.

00:45:32.260 | And with that, you can land cocaine back here by the ton."

00:45:36.740 | So he's taking his little planes and putting some AK-47s and maybe ammunition or whatever,

00:45:42.500 | and takes it down to the country against the Communist Party of Nicaragua, where we've

00:45:49.060 | been landing.

00:45:50.440 | And all over North was involved in this.

00:45:52.340 | So when all that, and so his CIA buddies was certainly involved, and we know they were.

00:46:00.540 | And Barry had been in the CIA earlier when he first got out of school.

00:46:05.100 | So when, as I say, the shit hit the fan, they all fled and left Barry holding the bag.

00:46:13.740 | The CIA and the DEA?

00:46:15.380 | Yeah.

00:46:16.380 | Not the DEA, the CIA.

00:46:17.380 | The DEA wasn't in on it.

00:46:19.220 | The CIA was selling that cocaine, bringing it in.

00:46:23.660 | Just to clarify, what's Iran-Contra scandal?

00:46:28.580 | What was the alleged involvement of the CIA in using drug trade to fund things?

00:46:37.220 | What do you know?

00:46:38.940 | What do you think is true?

00:46:41.100 | What should we know?

00:46:42.100 | Well, I know.

00:46:43.580 | What I know is true, that Barry was taking a small amount of arms back to Central America

00:46:49.260 | and giving them to whoever Oliver North group were.

00:46:54.740 | Oliver North was a colonel that got implemented and almost brought the government down.

00:46:58.780 | And so they said, "All right, we're getting the guns from Iran, and we're taking cocaine

00:47:02.960 | to pay for them.

00:47:03.960 | And since Congress won't give us money to fight this war, we're going to circumvent

00:47:09.060 | it."

00:47:10.220 | So that was a whole thing.

00:47:12.300 | So it was a CIA's effort to circumvent the funding mechanisms of government by selling

00:47:20.340 | drugs.

00:47:21.340 | Yes, but it was a handful of renegade CIA agents, they were Barry's friends, that was

00:47:26.860 | making a load, load of money.

00:47:30.340 | Tons of it come up.

00:47:31.340 | If you would like to read the book, The Big White Lie, The CIA and the Crack Cocaine Epidemic,

00:47:37.620 | the CIA put, according to the book, Michael Levine, I didn't remember his name last

00:47:45.540 | time I talked, wrote that book.

00:47:48.380 | And he was a head CIA agent, he was a head DEA agent that exposed this.

00:47:54.100 | And the CIA tried to kill him.

00:47:55.820 | And he says they put crack cocaine, they developed, their chemists developed crack.

00:48:00.540 | And they put it in every city in the United States on one weekend.

00:48:04.300 | So they were bringing it up by the tons, and that's for sure.

00:48:07.740 | And Barry was bringing it.

00:48:09.020 | Can I ask you a small tangent question?

00:48:12.860 | Do you think the public should trust the CIA and the DEA?

00:48:18.780 | Do you think they're mostly good people that are carrying out a good mission?

00:48:24.100 | Because this kind of makes it sound like there's renegade agents that are just doing whatever

00:48:28.900 | the hell they want, and with sometimes no regard for human life.

00:48:34.220 | And that's certainly true.

00:48:35.540 | But that's not everybody in there.

00:48:37.020 | That's just sometimes you get a few policemen in the department that do these things.

00:48:41.580 | I don't believe, I believe that our government is good.

00:48:45.060 | I think we got some fools running it.

00:48:46.780 | I don't know how we get them there, but I don't think I know.

00:48:51.020 | Okay, so what was Barry's involvement here?

00:48:54.540 | So Barry leaned back in that chair and he told me that he got caught with one and a

00:49:01.420 | half tons and he bellied it in the runway in Nicaragua and had cameras flashing inside

00:49:10.220 | and out.

00:49:11.220 | And he flew it back to Homestead with an agent there and he brought the agent over, Jake

00:49:17.540 | Jacobson, really nice fellow.

00:49:19.500 | I think he was a crop duster.

00:49:20.500 | If we'd have got along, we'd have been on the right side.

00:49:23.700 | And so we sat there and drank Chevy's Regal until I got pie-eyed.

00:49:28.260 | And Barry told me about it.

00:49:29.420 | He said that he went to see Edwin Meese.

00:49:31.900 | He got out on bail and he flew his Learjet up to Washington and went in to see the attorney

00:49:37.260 | general, Edwin Meese.

00:49:39.140 | And they run him out of the office.

00:49:41.300 | The next day he went back and said, "I have absolute proof that the CIA is bringing tons

00:49:46.180 | of cocaine or they're running tons of cocaine into the United States."

00:49:50.860 | And Edwin Meese put him up with this agent, Jacobson, I believe it was.

00:49:54.660 | And they went down and got one and a half tons.

00:49:56.500 | And on the way back, they bellied it in and Pablo Escobar and some of the other ones,

00:50:02.420 | on general there in Nicaragua, you can see them toting it from one plane to the other

00:50:07.300 | in the book called The Kings of Cocaine.

00:50:11.300 | It's got a mention of me too.

00:50:13.220 | And also the other one has a mention of me in it.

00:50:15.740 | Said I'm in more files for the DEA than Noriega.

00:50:20.740 | So who wanted to get rid of Barry?

00:50:24.540 | Who wanted to get rid of Barry more?

00:50:25.860 | The cartels or the CIA?

00:50:28.940 | The cartel.

00:50:31.220 | But so Barry leaned back and he told me the story.

00:50:34.780 | And the tears came down between his fingers as he put his hands over his eyes.

00:50:38.060 | And he said, "I just couldn't do it, Roger.

00:50:40.420 | I just couldn't do three life sentences.

00:50:42.620 | So I've told him everything.

00:50:43.620 | I went to Congress and I've testified before Congress."

00:50:45.860 | He testified before Congress for all these things that he'd done.

00:50:49.180 | And he said, "I told him all about you, but you're under my umbrella.

00:50:54.340 | You got to testify with me before grand jury in Miami."

00:50:58.620 | And so the guy said, "You can come down," the DEA agent said, "You can come down tomorrow

00:51:02.060 | with Mari first class or I'll take you down in chains.

00:51:07.380 | And if you don't testify with Barry, the only place you'll ever see your wife and family

00:51:11.820 | again is in a federal prison visiting room."

00:51:14.580 | Was that a difficult conversation?

00:51:16.060 | Oh, my eyes, my guts was just like ice water.

00:51:19.300 | I can't testify against my friends.

00:51:21.580 | I just can't do it.

00:51:23.580 | How am I going to do it?

00:51:25.980 | I can't work with people.

00:51:26.980 | And he was honest with me.

00:51:27.980 | How am I going to testify against them?

00:51:29.620 | I can't spend the rest of my life in a federal prison.

00:51:32.660 | What on earth, what a mess, Barry, you've got me into.

00:51:37.140 | So- Is that a kind of betrayal there?

00:51:39.820 | Yes, but it's still, I wish he'd left me out of it.

00:51:45.340 | I understand him getting in such a mess that he told because if the CIA and whoever else

00:51:51.700 | was behind him betrayed him, then he's going to tell everything.

00:51:55.020 | So I says, "All right, I'll be in Miami."

00:51:56.580 | So Mari and I flew down first class and I went to a lawyer, one of the biggest lawyers

00:52:02.340 | in Miami.

00:52:03.340 | And I said, "Man, I am in a mess.

00:52:06.260 | This fellow's told everything and I've got to say something, but I'm not a snitch, man.

00:52:10.740 | I mean, I can have, what can I do?"

00:52:13.580 | And he said, "Well, being a snitch is like being pregnant.

00:52:16.380 | You either are or you're not."

00:52:17.380 | And he says, "I don't represent snitches, but if you want to fight this case, I'll do

00:52:26.220 | it for $600,000."

00:52:27.220 | And boy, my face turned red.

00:52:30.020 | "Well, I'm not a snitch."

00:52:31.020 | He said, "Well, that's what you're talking about."

00:52:32.700 | He said, "Let me tell you something.

00:52:33.700 | If you go in there and say one thing and sign that paper and you don't tell them everything

00:52:38.460 | you know, then they will convict you of everything you've ever done and you tell them.

00:52:43.340 | So you can't do it."

00:52:45.740 | So I said, "Barry, I'm having trouble with a lawyer.

00:52:49.300 | I'll go tomorrow.

00:52:50.300 | Let's go."

00:52:51.300 | He said, "All right, use my lawyer."

00:52:52.700 | And he gave me his card, the lawyer's card.

00:52:54.380 | So Murray and I went to the festival restaurant that night and Barry and Debbie came in.

00:52:59.500 | She was dressed pretty and Barry wasn't.

00:53:01.620 | So we was already about finished.

00:53:02.780 | So we had dessert together.

00:53:04.500 | And I said, "Barry, they're going to kill you, friend."

00:53:06.220 | He said, "No, they ain't going to kill me.

00:53:08.180 | So and so, such and such is gone and this and the other."

00:53:11.460 | I said, "Barry, they're going to kill you, man.

00:53:13.900 | You can't deny it."

00:53:16.220 | And I didn't tell him I wasn't going to testify.

00:53:19.660 | So I hugged his neck.

00:53:21.740 | I really like, and we fled to Brazil.

00:53:23.940 | I took Murray and the children and went to Brazil.

00:53:25.740 | - So you decided there you're not going to stay.

00:53:27.740 | - I knew I didn't know what I could do.

00:53:30.980 | I talked to a lawyer.

00:53:31.980 | I mean, I just didn't, I didn't know what I could do, but the best in Miami said what

00:53:36.820 | he told me.

00:53:37.940 | So I had to go.

00:53:38.940 | - And you went to Brazil.

00:53:39.940 | - We went to Brazil.

00:53:40.940 | - Did you have a conversation with anybody at the cartel?

00:53:43.780 | I mean, that's such an interesting moment that tests the man's character to not snitch.

00:53:54.300 | And did you have a conversation with anybody?

00:53:57.100 | - No.

00:53:58.100 | - Pablo was about it.

00:53:59.100 | - No, not at all.

00:54:00.780 | - So it's just understood.

00:54:02.260 | - I just didn't, couldn't do it.

00:54:04.580 | - But how many men like you are there?

00:54:06.660 | - Not many.

00:54:07.660 | I had all my friends testified against me.

00:54:09.420 | I had 11 friends and every one of them put their finger up, Roger did it.

00:54:12.260 | And I was facing life, continuing criminal enterprise.

00:54:15.300 | - And still you couldn't do it.

00:54:16.540 | - I just couldn't do it.

00:54:17.540 | - Did you ever get respect from the cartels for that?

00:54:21.940 | - Oh, there was a time I got back and stuff.

00:54:24.620 | They owe me money and I can't get it.

00:54:27.060 | - Well, that's about money.

00:54:29.100 | I just mean about human beings.

00:54:30.700 | - Oh, I think so.

00:54:31.900 | I've been back down there and I've been welcomed.

00:54:34.540 | I have my contact and when I was in Brazil, I was trying to get this money.

00:54:39.460 | They owe me three and a half million dollars.

00:54:41.420 | So I called up there and he was gonna pay me.

00:54:43.140 | Oh, I got 600,000 today and I'll get you some more tomorrow.

00:54:47.180 | And then the next week I called, hey, I got great news, great news.

00:54:51.300 | Barry Seal's been killed.

00:54:54.020 | So oh no, and I went back to the hotel.

00:54:56.300 | We was up in the northern part of Brazil and where was it, Maddy?

00:55:01.940 | Yeah.

00:55:03.260 | And so I went back and I told Mari and Miriam and they cried and I cried.

00:55:08.100 | I really cried.

00:55:09.100 | - How is that great news from the cartel perspective?

00:55:11.820 | - Oh, well now there's no case against me and him and them.

00:55:15.580 | - Do you know who killed them?

00:55:16.820 | - Yes.

00:55:17.820 | I'll tell you about that story.

00:55:20.220 | On the first load I did, I landed at a banana plantation and it was raining and it was a

00:55:26.140 | muddy strip, clay.

00:55:28.180 | And they put the 300 kilos of cocaine and then the ugliest man you could imagine, named

00:55:32.540 | Ronaldo, got in there with a Mac-10 and he would make sure I took it to Louisiana.

00:55:38.580 | So--

00:55:39.580 | - This is many years before.

00:55:40.580 | - Yeah, a couple of years before.

00:55:42.260 | So anyway, we took off and the mud got up in the wheel well so thick until the wheels

00:55:50.260 | wouldn't come up.

00:55:51.260 | Well, I'm going 200 miles an hour instead of 300 miles an hour with wheels coming down.

00:55:55.860 | Well I can't go back there.

00:55:57.900 | If I do, I'm going to be in the same situation until the sun dries it out in a few days.

00:56:02.820 | And so, but in Belize I had a runway that had been used for $10,000 used to refuel.

00:56:08.820 | So I told the guy, "Listen, we got to land in Belize to refuel."

00:56:12.660 | "No, no, no."

00:56:13.660 | He put the Mac-10 and I'll shoot you.

00:56:15.940 | "Go ahead, fool.

00:56:16.940 | You're going to die too."

00:56:17.940 | So I was in the turf.

00:56:20.420 | - He wasn't just ugly, he was also angry.

00:56:22.220 | - He was a bad, bad killer.

00:56:25.060 | So he's the one that actually killed Barry, the one that went up on the first load with

00:56:31.780 | me and Ronaldo and he's doing life.

00:56:35.820 | - So he's just a killer.

00:56:37.340 | - Yeah.

00:56:38.340 | He's doing life in Louisiana.

00:56:39.900 | - I wonder who, is it known who made that decision?

00:56:44.620 | - The younger Ochoa brother, I understand, Favio, was the one paid for the hit.

00:56:50.780 | I don't know that, but that's what I've heard and it probably sounds about right.

00:56:54.580 | He's down in Jessup, Georgia, doing a long, long time.

00:56:58.100 | I think he's about to get out.

00:56:59.380 | He's been in 30 years or whatever.

00:57:03.460 | - The movie "American Maid," what do you think that movie got right?

00:57:09.420 | What did it get wrong?

00:57:11.500 | - Almost everything wrong.

00:57:14.500 | It was disgustingly wrong.

00:57:17.100 | - Okay, which parts?

00:57:20.420 | Can you maybe elaborate?

00:57:22.580 | - It was about Barry Seal and it just didn't even, it was nothing.

00:57:27.220 | Whoever wrote it had no idea who Barry Seal was.

00:57:29.660 | They sat in a rocking chair and just tried to think of what was some baby bashing drug

00:57:35.700 | dealer doing and it's just like, "God, you just don't have any idea of the spirit of

00:57:41.660 | the man."

00:57:42.660 | - So they wanted just to try to tell a fun story without actually studying the story.

00:57:47.500 | - They didn't know him.

00:57:48.500 | They just had no idea.

00:57:50.180 | And Barry was such a nice person, such a really nice gentleman person.

00:57:54.220 | - They talked to you or no?

00:57:55.580 | - No.

00:57:56.580 | - The people that made the movie?

00:57:57.580 | - No.

00:57:58.580 | And I see all these people telling about Barry and never met him.

00:58:01.780 | They tell him all about him.

00:58:02.780 | I think that's just ridiculous.

00:58:05.380 | And for one thing, for his character coming out of whorehouses and all that, that was

00:58:09.460 | just like ugly.

00:58:10.900 | And then down in Columbia, putting a gun to his head, gonna take his sunglasses and then

00:58:16.420 | put $25,000 million worth of cocaine on his plane.

00:58:19.940 | And then they go and bet $100 he don't have enough room to take off.

00:58:24.980 | That's just insane.

00:58:25.980 | I mean, just the whole thing.

00:58:28.820 | And then he's talking to the DEA agents when he's coming up.

00:58:31.820 | You don't know what frequency they own, how he's got five planes and they all split when

00:58:36.300 | the DEA comes out.

00:58:37.900 | These are just somebody's fantasy.

00:58:40.100 | - But those are details of the man, details of the story.

00:58:44.940 | Is there some big profound things they missed about just this whole period?

00:58:50.660 | About that's something that's really important to you that was missed?

00:58:54.860 | - Yes.

00:58:56.060 | They just try to sensationalize on little things that people remember.

00:59:00.620 | And it's just not true.

00:59:02.660 | It was just like a business deal and good people and good airplanes and good flying.

00:59:11.620 | It was like a good watch that was made.

00:59:14.300 | It just clicked and it just went on.

00:59:16.820 | And they missed all that.

00:59:17.940 | They tried to make it sound like it's something very ugly.

00:59:20.500 | - Do you think there was a story that could have been told way better and still be a hell

00:59:24.180 | of a good story?

00:59:25.180 | - Oh my goodness, yes.

00:59:26.180 | - Well, there's a series called "Chernobyl" done by HBO.

00:59:32.100 | And because I have sort of family connected to that period, they did an incredible job

00:59:37.980 | of being historically accurate and only not being historically accurate when it helped

00:59:42.900 | the story only in those rare cases.

00:59:45.460 | When they on purpose left the story to make it easier for people to understand, but it

00:59:51.980 | was still somehow accurate.

00:59:54.500 | And even though all the actors were British actors speaking English with a British accent,

01:00:00.220 | it was still somehow accurate.

01:00:02.620 | Like they captured the spirit.

01:00:05.700 | So it was historically accurate and the spirit was captured.

01:00:08.220 | That was one of the most incredible series I've ever seen.

01:00:11.900 | - It convinced me that the movie was made by non-Russians.

01:00:17.580 | It convinced me that if you really care about a story, you don't have to have been brought

01:00:23.020 | up in it.

01:00:24.020 | You don't even need to speak the language.

01:00:25.440 | If you're truly a scholar of it, if you talk to a lot of people, if you learn, if you just

01:00:31.340 | pour your heart and soul into it, you can create something really special.

01:00:34.740 | And so your sense is you could do that with the story with this period of time.

01:00:39.300 | - Oh yes.

01:00:40.860 | It was a story that needs to be told.

01:00:43.380 | It need to be told in the correct way.

01:00:45.220 | Not like we're trying to bash a certain angle.

01:00:48.980 | - Yeah.

01:00:49.980 | Well, if Netflix or HBO are watching this, you need to tell the story of Roger Rees,

01:00:55.340 | in my opinion.

01:00:56.340 | There you go.

01:00:57.340 | Is this young picture of you?

01:00:59.060 | - Yeah.

01:01:00.060 | - There you go.

01:01:01.060 | - That's from National Geographic.

01:01:02.060 | - Jorge Arcoa, Pablo Escobar, it's you, Roger and Barry.

01:01:06.060 | - Yeah.

01:01:07.060 | - Smuggler, a memoir.

01:01:09.380 | - Yeah, I really do hope that they make a movie of this one.

01:01:15.260 | There's a movie called Blow that tells the story of George Young, Boston George.

01:01:20.260 | Did you know George Young?

01:01:22.260 | That's one way to ask it.

01:01:23.300 | The other is what do you think of the movie Blow?

01:01:25.580 | - I didn't know George Young, but it was a wonderful movie.

01:01:29.380 | Absolutely, it captured it.

01:01:31.860 | - It did?

01:01:32.860 | - Yes, it did.

01:01:33.860 | That's the way it should be.

01:01:34.860 | - So he was a little bit before your time?

01:01:36.740 | - Exactly the same time.

01:01:38.180 | - Exactly the same time.

01:01:39.180 | - He was using stewardesses to fly the marijuana out of Manhattan Beach and I was on the fire

01:01:44.980 | department in Redondo Beach, 10 miles away, flying it up, sending it back.

01:01:49.820 | Somebody was sending it back.

01:01:50.820 | He might've been sending it back.

01:01:53.060 | But he didn't have near the excitement that I did.

01:01:55.700 | I was shot down twice.

01:01:57.780 | I escaped from five different prisons.

01:01:59.700 | I was tortured almost to death in a Mexican prison.

01:02:02.180 | So he didn't have all that fun that I had.

01:02:04.340 | - Fun in quotes.

01:02:05.340 | Yeah.

01:02:06.340 | - Yeah, it was a heck of a fun adventure.

01:02:09.380 | Just to linger on a little bit.

01:02:10.940 | So Johnny Depp plays George and Ray Liotta plays his father.

01:02:16.860 | And there's this son-father kind of scene at the end.

01:02:22.820 | I don't know.

01:02:25.020 | It's heartbreaking.

01:02:26.940 | That scene paints a picture of a life that could have been had if none of this wild drugs

01:02:36.260 | smuggling happened.

01:02:38.900 | I don't usually, I mean, I don't almost, I really never get like teary-eyed in a movie,

01:02:47.060 | but that got me.

01:02:49.220 | It's almost like confronting at the end of your life, what your life could have been

01:02:54.540 | with your father.

01:02:55.540 | The way he calls him Georgie.

01:03:01.380 | Like you fucked up Georgie.

01:03:02.940 | - Yes.

01:03:03.940 | I did too.

01:03:05.340 | I really, really did.

01:03:07.340 | Mario waited for me all those years and the children raised them without me.

01:03:10.740 | Visited me in prisons all over the world.

01:03:13.780 | Just unbelievable.

01:03:14.780 | It's just nothing's worth that kind of money.

01:03:18.100 | - Yeah.

01:03:20.100 | Can you tell the story of when you were tortured nearly to death in a Mexican prison?

01:03:27.020 | - I sure can.

01:03:28.020 | And I'm smiling, but it was nothing to smile about, I can tell you.

01:03:32.100 | I was in a pool and a gentleman came over and shook hands with me and put handcuffs

01:03:37.180 | on me.

01:03:38.180 | And I thought, what in the world?

01:03:39.180 | That was one of the nice hotels.

01:03:41.260 | They put me in a jail cell and I sat there and all the trunks and thieves and stuff kept

01:03:47.620 | coming in and they had a bucket and it overrun.

01:03:50.940 | And I said, I remember like 18 people in a room about 12 foot square.

01:03:55.900 | Oh, it was hot and I thought, somebody's got to come get me.

01:03:59.980 | This ain't real.

01:04:00.980 | I hadn't done anything.

01:04:02.580 | It was a pilot come to see me up in Hermosillo and he stopped and he made a mistake and went

01:04:08.340 | to the International Runway instead of where he was supposed to go.

01:04:11.260 | And he had my phony name in his pocket, so they got me.

01:04:16.500 | So they said I was a drug smuggler.

01:04:19.180 | So after about three days, they put me back into the back and it was a torture place.

01:04:24.660 | And they put me in a little cell, I guess it wasn't hard, it wasn't six feet, it must

01:04:28.020 | have been about five feet square and about 12 feet high.

01:04:31.340 | And it was June, the end of June, and it was hot.

01:04:35.460 | I mean hot.

01:04:37.740 | And they left me in there for, I guess, a few days.

01:04:41.340 | You didn't know.

01:04:42.340 | So every once in a while, they'd come drag me out and first off, they put my head underwater

01:04:48.360 | and it had seltzer in it or some kind.

01:04:50.740 | And I took one whiff of that and three or four of them couldn't hold me down.

01:04:54.500 | So then I learned that just before you have to breathe, tear loose like that and they'll

01:04:58.820 | let you up.

01:05:01.460 | And that was the first treatment.

01:05:02.940 | And then they started beating me.

01:05:04.860 | And they beat me with a blackjack and rubber hose until I was black and blue and yellow

01:05:08.740 | from the bottom of my feet to my head.

01:05:11.100 | What did they want from you?

01:05:12.100 | They wanted me to sign a confession that I was a drug smuggler.

01:05:15.820 | And they put the papers under your nose.

01:05:18.540 | This is all over if you'll sign.

01:05:19.540 | Well, I knew if you signed, you got six years.

01:05:22.700 | I wasn't gonna sign.

01:05:24.420 | I wasn't gonna sign.

01:05:26.420 | So they didn't want you to snitch on anybody.

01:05:28.220 | They just wanted to say-- No, they just wanted me to sign that paper.

01:05:30.580 | And you still didn't.

01:05:31.580 | I didn't bow to them.

01:05:32.580 | A beating ain't that bad.

01:05:33.580 | So anyhow, he's getting me to the good part.

01:05:41.380 | So then they come and they take me out.

01:05:43.580 | I'm buck naked and they bend me over and they have things to pull you like chains, click,

01:05:47.620 | click, click, click, click.

01:05:48.620 | And they bent me over.

01:05:49.780 | And they put butter on my bum and they commenced to put hot chili pepper up there.

01:05:56.420 | And that stuff was bad.

01:05:57.620 | I mean, it was red hot.

01:06:01.100 | And that was awful.

01:06:03.540 | And still-- That was just awful.

01:06:07.660 | Yeah, but still you didn't-- I didn't think about it.

01:06:10.100 | I ain't gonna tell you.

01:06:11.100 | I guess if I'd have known he was gonna kill me, I wouldn't have done it.

01:06:14.740 | But I wasn't about-- You get hurt bad enough, you'll pass out.

01:06:19.220 | So I didn't pass out.

01:06:20.700 | So I was all right.

01:06:22.540 | So then the last thing they did was they brought a dead man in there.

01:06:27.340 | And he was frozen.

01:06:28.340 | He was wrapped in newspaper, little strips about a half inch wide, just like a mummy.

01:06:32.660 | And he was frozen.

01:06:34.220 | And they hung him on the wall with a meat hook.

01:06:37.420 | And "You next, son of a bitch.

01:06:39.540 | You next."

01:06:41.140 | And so he's sitting there like this.

01:06:43.300 | And as he starts to thaw out, which is pretty quick, it looks like he's crying.

01:06:48.380 | And it looks like he's peeing.

01:06:50.220 | And the paper starts unraveling on him.

01:06:52.740 | And the formaldehyde puddles on the floor.

01:06:54.780 | Ooh, what a smell, that rotten insides and the formaldehyde.

01:07:00.340 | And there was a little space.

01:07:02.300 | It wasn't even a half inch high under the door.

01:07:04.420 | And I lay on that filthy floor with my cheek and put my lips right up under that door and

01:07:08.300 | was sucking that fresh air.

01:07:09.300 | And I went to sleep after some time.

01:07:11.700 | And I know where Walt Disney gets his ideas.

01:07:14.620 | I saw white, pink pigs with wings on them, all kinds of stuff flying around.

01:07:20.780 | So when I woke up, I didn't know which was real and which was the nightmare.

01:07:24.660 | It took me a minute to figure out where I was and what was going on.

01:07:29.500 | How did you stay mentally strong through that time?

01:07:34.460 | I don't know that I did.

01:07:35.460 | Yeah, I was mentally strong.

01:07:36.460 | So I was, just like I am now.

01:07:37.460 | Stubborn.

01:07:38.460 | I mean, you could be that man that could have killed you.

01:07:43.020 | Yes, I could have.

01:07:44.320 | So what gave you hope?

01:07:46.340 | Did you have hope?

01:07:47.340 | Yeah.

01:07:48.340 | Or you were just a stubborn son of a bitch?

01:07:49.700 | I think some of both of it.

01:07:50.940 | And I think they aren't going to keep you here forever.

01:07:53.540 | You know, you're going to get out into the prison or they're going to let you go or something.

01:07:56.060 | And if you sign that paper, you ain't going nowhere.

01:07:58.660 | And I want to go home.

01:08:01.660 | I got shot down a few weeks before that.

01:08:05.220 | I got shot from out the sky.

01:08:06.780 | It was 80 bullets.

01:08:07.780 | I was through the plane, killed a fellow on the ground, shot the leg nearly off the man

01:08:12.780 | in that little place.

01:08:13.780 | And they were shooting you from the ground.

01:08:14.780 | Yeah, yeah.

01:08:15.780 | All right.

01:08:16.780 | A little 900-foot strip there at Pichilinga, a poor, poor village with starving donkeys.

01:08:23.220 | That's where I'd give them $17,000 for the load.

01:08:26.100 | And I'd go over on the highway and load.

01:08:27.940 | Well, on day 13, I did a load every day for 13 days.

01:08:31.220 | They had a bunch of marijuana, pretty good, piled up, and I was going to load a day.

01:08:35.660 | And on day 13, I had that little warning sign going off in my stomach, "Uh-oh, uh-oh, don't

01:08:41.620 | do it."

01:08:42.620 | But I asked this Joaquin, "Oh, we had the Federales paid off, no worry."

01:08:47.820 | So I spent the night in a hammock and walked down to the airplane just as it getting daylight.

01:08:54.620 | And 10 or 12 men walked with me, and Pedro got in.

01:08:57.380 | I brushed my teeth in the little stream.

01:08:58.860 | It was about a foot deep, a little river coming through there.

01:09:02.020 | He got in the airplane, and I fired her up.

01:09:05.620 | Bam, blah, blah.

01:09:06.620 | And bam, I thought a tire blew out.

01:09:09.620 | I looked over and still ain't dawned on me.

01:09:14.220 | And Pedro's yelling, "Police here, police here, Roger, police here."

01:09:18.020 | Well, it dawned on me, and I shoved the throttle to the firewall.

01:09:23.580 | And I only had-

01:09:24.580 | So that was a bullet.

01:09:25.580 | Yeah, somebody off to the side, they'd shot.

01:09:28.540 | They'd shot just a warning, like, "Get out, stop, we're going to rob you," whatever it

01:09:33.140 | is.

01:09:34.140 | That's what they do.

01:09:35.140 | They'd just taken the plane and me and put me in prison, the whole thing.

01:09:37.940 | But even though I had papers, so I just shoved it to the firewall, and there wasn't enough

01:09:42.260 | room to take off on that strip.

01:09:44.060 | And half of it was behind me, or some of it was behind me.

01:09:47.940 | And so just at the end, I'm just like, I think that thing stalls at about 50 miles an hour,

01:09:52.540 | just turning 50.

01:09:53.540 | And I just pulled it right up and put the flaps on.

01:09:57.700 | And as I pulled off the ground, they opened up on both sides of me with machine guns,

01:10:02.340 | and they riddled that airplane.

01:10:03.780 | I mean, the windshield came out.

01:10:06.620 | I got hit three times.

01:10:08.260 | You, like your body?

01:10:10.860 | Yeah.

01:10:11.860 | Where did you get hit?

01:10:12.860 | Well, I didn't know I was hit.

01:10:14.540 | I mean, it was just the gasoline just pouring in.

01:10:17.900 | The world turned yellow.

01:10:18.900 | I must have went into shock.

01:10:20.820 | So it just stopped in slow motion.

01:10:23.740 | And one bullet hit the strut right by my head, and parts of that bullet just went all over

01:10:30.820 | me.

01:10:31.820 | I just looked like I'd been peppered with lead.

01:10:35.620 | And the gasoline was just pouring in.

01:10:37.540 | I mean, just pouring in where they'd shot the wing up above, and the windshield's gone.

01:10:41.860 | I mean, I can't, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:10:43.860 | It was just like a hailstorm.

01:10:47.300 | So I was-

01:10:48.300 | The airplane's stalled or no?

01:10:50.780 | I was in a stall anyway, and I didn't realize it.

01:10:53.220 | And I guess you wouldn't unless you trained for it.

01:10:55.420 | But when you're in a stall, the elevator is kind of flappy.

01:10:59.980 | And I didn't realize it at the time.

01:11:01.260 | I thought they had shot the elevator cable in too.

01:11:04.180 | So I thought, "Oh, God."

01:11:05.260 | So I just reached over and switched it off, switched it, pulled the mixture, pulled everything.

01:11:10.100 | And in the river, there was rocks about as big as this table, and they were like the

01:11:15.220 | turtle back all the way up until there was a waterfall.

01:11:17.700 | It was quite a pretty place.

01:11:19.820 | And I crashed straight onto it.

01:11:21.260 | I thought, "If I get those rocks."

01:11:23.100 | And when I did, the first time I hit, the wings came off, and then it bounced.

01:11:26.700 | And the next time, the nose came up and came under the plane.

01:11:29.860 | And I'm sitting there.

01:11:30.860 | I must have been knocked unconscious, because Pedro's shaking me.

01:11:32.940 | "Come on, Roger.

01:11:33.940 | Come on, Roger."

01:11:34.940 | And I stepped out into the water, and here comes these four Federales still shooting

01:11:39.500 | at us.

01:11:40.500 | And I'm bullied to hit the airplane.

01:11:43.060 | And I kept a 9-millimeter Browning high-power taped to the top of the radio in case I ever

01:11:49.020 | needed it.

01:11:50.020 | [Laughter]

01:11:51.020 | It was one of those times.

01:11:52.020 | Because you didn't want it in the airplane.

01:11:53.900 | So it was just handy.

01:11:54.900 | You just lay in there.

01:11:55.900 | So I took and popped a few caps out of them, and they ran into the rocks.

01:12:00.060 | So we took off running, and then I looked, and Pedro's foot nearly shot off.

01:12:05.340 | They'd shot him on one side of the ankle, and it just blown out the other side.

01:12:08.820 | And it wasn't even hardly bleeding.

01:12:10.380 | The shock of it.

01:12:11.820 | So I took my T-shirt off and gripped it and tied it best I could.

01:12:15.060 | But you had still bullets in you, so you could still run.

01:12:17.820 | I shot the top of my toenail off.

01:12:19.900 | I shot it across my head and my kneecap.

01:12:22.660 | So I was just nicked.

01:12:25.020 | It was very painful later on.

01:12:26.700 | But right that time, it was just hot.

01:12:29.380 | And there was a bullet still in my foot from it, a piece of a bullet, a good-sized slug.

01:12:35.020 | So we went on up the mountain through the cactus.

01:12:37.540 | Just running.

01:12:38.540 | Just going, "I want to go down."

01:12:39.540 | "No, no, there are federales that go in the easy way.

01:12:42.460 | Let's go through."

01:12:43.460 | This young fellow.

01:12:44.460 | And we came to an old donkey.

01:12:45.820 | She must have been 30 years old, long and way back, long hair on her.

01:12:50.140 | "Charlotte, Charlotte."

01:12:51.140 | And he petted the donkey, and we jumped on.

01:12:54.160 | And we rode for seven--

01:12:55.160 | Like an actual donkey?

01:12:56.160 | A donkey.

01:12:57.160 | There were donkeys all over the place.

01:12:58.160 | I knew that one from the village.

01:12:59.800 | And so we rode seven miles, two of us on a donkey with no bridle, no saddle, nothing.

01:13:04.340 | And we came to a little man plowing a little horse and a little ox.

01:13:09.720 | Both of them spotted.

01:13:10.720 | And the ox was--the yoke was across their back this way, and he's plowing with a little

01:13:14.300 | plow amongst thumps.

01:13:15.780 | It was like one of these people clearing a little piece of land.

01:13:17.980 | And he had a little house there.

01:13:20.300 | And so we went into his house, and his wife and his daughter, they put like cloth over

01:13:24.900 | my wounds and on Pedro's.

01:13:26.820 | It was terrible.

01:13:29.060 | And they poured diesel oil on it to keep the flies off.

01:13:32.140 | So I'm covered in diesel.

01:13:34.660 | So the man left, and he was gone all day.

01:13:38.260 | And then about dark, he showed up, and he had about 15 or 20 horses and mules showed

01:13:42.120 | up in the yard walking fast.

01:13:44.420 | And a doctor got out.

01:13:45.420 | He said, "I'm Dr. Benjamin Soso with Red Cross."

01:13:48.300 | And he worked on my foot, and he worked on Pedro.

01:13:50.300 | He gave us a shot of morphine and tetanus shots.

01:13:53.540 | And he said, "You've got to get to hospital."

01:13:55.340 | He said, "Pedro will die if he don't get to hospital."

01:13:57.540 | He said, "They're looking for an American pilot that's been shot down, and they think

01:14:01.580 | he's dead.

01:14:02.580 | There was a lot of blood in that airplane."

01:14:04.420 | And so they rode.

01:14:06.820 | I don't know how far we rode, but we rode miles.

01:14:08.900 | And we'd come to a road, and there was a big truck, and it was loaded with corn in

01:14:12.260 | the ear.

01:14:13.260 | And they dug holes in that corn and put us in it and covered us up.

01:14:17.420 | And the road was rough, and every time we'd hit a dirt road, that corn would cover me

01:14:21.660 | up, and they'd scratch my face out again.

01:14:23.620 | And when we came to the highway, we went into a house, and they got me some clothes.

01:14:28.660 | Mine was messed up.

01:14:30.460 | And a white basin, and they must have brought 20 jugs of water different times.

01:14:34.980 | I kept washing and washing my foot till all the blood and the crud got off of me and put

01:14:39.340 | on those clothes.

01:14:41.020 | And somebody went to—they said, "You can't go north of Rhodes Block.

01:14:44.380 | They're looking for the pilot.

01:14:45.380 | So you've got to go south."

01:14:47.160 | So they found a taxi in Mazatlan, and it was a rather new taxi.

01:14:52.540 | And the fellow would take me to Guadalajara, which was, I don't know, seven, eight hours

01:14:56.340 | south.

01:14:58.540 | So we got in that taxi, and they propped me up with sheets and blankets and pillows in

01:15:02.140 | the back seat and gave me these great big white pain pills.

01:15:06.980 | And I was quite content.

01:15:08.920 | Then I was shot down in Columbia also.

01:15:12.300 | Can you tell that story?

01:15:14.900 | I sure can.

01:15:15.900 | All right.

01:15:16.900 | I went down for a load of marijuana.

01:15:20.640 | And we got to the place, and we got there too early.

01:15:24.100 | And the guerrillas screamed, "You've got to get out of here.

01:15:27.180 | You've got to get out of here."

01:15:28.180 | And so we went back to the place where we staged from and refueled.

01:15:31.940 | I had a beautiful DC-3.

01:15:34.100 | It carried three tons.

01:15:36.500 | And so while I was waiting, I ate something for lunch, and I went around behind the house.

01:15:45.620 | We refueled a plane up.

01:15:46.620 | I had to wait till late in the afternoon.

01:15:47.620 | They wanted me to come just at dark.

01:15:49.500 | So the military planes couldn't see me on their strip.

01:15:55.000 | So I'm laying in a hammock asleep, and I hear this terrible roar.

01:16:00.420 | And I look right up through the trees, and at the ass end of two military jets going

01:16:04.420 | straight up.

01:16:07.160 | They do a dive over, and they came back down the strip in front of that airplane, and they

01:16:10.420 | just tear it up with .50 caliber machine guns.

01:16:12.920 | They just showing out.

01:16:15.040 | So I run for the airplane.

01:16:16.600 | I just give that guy $80,000, and he ran for the truck, and all the rest of them ran for

01:16:20.520 | the truck.

01:16:21.520 | I should have ran with my money, but I didn't.

01:16:24.160 | I ran for the airplane.

01:16:26.000 | And the copilot got in, and his name was Al.

01:16:28.800 | He got in with me, and two fellows got in the back.

01:16:30.680 | We had drums of fuel in there to refuel when we got down to the gorillas.

01:16:36.040 | So we took off, and I couldn't get the gear up because I'd taken off in such a hurry.

01:16:41.920 | These pins in the struts of a DC-3, and with big flags on them, and you have to take them

01:16:46.120 | up so that the plane won't come up.

01:16:49.040 | So these jets swarmed on me, and they tried to get me to go.

01:16:51.660 | They kept telling me which way to go, and the pilot would be just as close as just right

01:16:55.400 | over there.

01:16:56.400 | I could see him.

01:16:57.400 | I just held up the old hippie piece.

01:16:58.400 | I didn't think they would shoot.

01:17:00.240 | I really didn't.

01:17:02.080 | Nobody had shot before.

01:17:04.600 | So I kept flying out, and I kept getting slower and slower, and they kept slowing down, down,

01:17:09.200 | down, and the black smoke rolling.

01:17:11.760 | And then they started shooting up under me, boom, boom, boom, boom, with them 20-millimeter

01:17:16.200 | cannons, and the tracers just going up.

01:17:18.520 | They looked like they're curving up from me, and I, "Whoa," and I pushed the nose over

01:17:22.320 | so they couldn't get under me.

01:17:23.480 | And later on, I heard they thought I tried to ram them.

01:17:27.600 | So one of them went for fuel, and I kept on going, and the one just tore the left wing

01:17:33.520 | tip up with a .50 caliber, and then he come back again and shot the tail up.

01:17:38.680 | He's warning me.

01:17:39.680 | And I tell the fellow in there, I says, "You know, if you bring me enough water, I believe

01:17:43.200 | I can fly this thing."

01:17:44.520 | My mouth got quite dry.

01:17:47.860 | So I went on, and I landed on a big pasture, and it was a huge pasture, and it was rougher

01:17:57.280 | than it looked, and the wings just flapped.

01:17:58.760 | And I come to a stop and jumped out and pulled those tabs out and threw them on the ground

01:18:02.800 | so I could get my gear up.

01:18:05.040 | And I understand that during the 1980 World Series baseball game that it says, "American

01:18:10.080 | DC-3 has just been shot down by American jets, by Colombian jets."

01:18:14.280 | You know, it's the first plane shot down on Reagan's New World on drugs.

01:18:17.360 | But he's up.

01:18:18.360 | He's up and away, ladies and gentlemen.

01:18:19.640 | We keep you posted.

01:18:20.640 | So I took off again, and I went into a thunderstorm, and they came close to the mountains.

01:18:26.160 | So I spiraled up, and every time I'd come out, that jet was there, boom, boom, boom.

01:18:31.200 | And I dove back into that storm, boom, boom, boom, in there.

01:18:35.440 | And at 20,000 feet, I started icing up.

01:18:38.000 | So I went out one last time, and he was right there waiting.

01:18:40.120 | He had me on radar.

01:18:41.400 | So I went back in, and I kicked it over and put it into a spin and went straight down

01:18:45.000 | to 2,000 feet and come out under it.

01:18:48.200 | And I was flying along the Guaviera River, and it was 20 feet above the water.

01:18:54.480 | It looked like a pasture.

01:18:56.040 | It was just grass.

01:18:57.700 | And I made several runs to tear the grass down, and it looked like it felt hard.

01:19:02.200 | That old DC-3 weighs 30,000 pounds.

01:19:04.760 | And I put it down on the fifth run.

01:19:06.760 | I said, "All right, we're going to land now."

01:19:09.120 | And as I was-- So you flew like close several times?

01:19:11.480 | No, I put the wheels down.

01:19:12.640 | Oh, you put the wheels down without landing?

01:19:13.640 | And it's been about half a mile, and just-- So I'm making my run, you know?

01:19:18.640 | So, okay.

01:19:19.840 | So you're being tracked by a jet.

01:19:23.080 | He's going.

01:19:24.080 | Just trying to-- Well, before that.

01:19:25.760 | Yes.

01:19:26.760 | Before I'm telling the story how insane it is.

01:19:30.680 | He's trying to shoot you down, and there's a thunderstorm that you're escaping into.

01:19:36.120 | And then you do a spin down to, what, 2,000 feet, whatever you said, like somehow escaping

01:19:42.660 | all of this.

01:19:43.660 | And then you try to land on a pasture on a giant heavy plane that carries three tons

01:19:51.840 | by touching down five or six times to make a landing strip for yourself.

01:19:58.760 | Yeah, the grass is three or four feet high.

01:20:01.720 | So it looked really good after a few times.

01:20:04.520 | So then just before it stopped, I said, "Al, take your feet off the brakes."

01:20:07.240 | He said, "I don't have my feet on the brakes."

01:20:09.120 | Well, I knew I had broken through the crust.

01:20:11.880 | And I put full power on, but it didn't.

01:20:13.960 | That old big plane just come on down, and it just did a head-- As it came to a stop,

01:20:18.480 | it did a headstand, 90 degrees to the ground.

01:20:22.760 | And the engines held it up, and the nose and all just crushed in right on it.

01:20:27.260 | We fell between the two seats to keep from getting killed.

01:20:29.600 | And when it come to a stop, all that fuel was pouring out on those hot engines, and

01:20:34.320 | there's an escape hatch at the top.

01:20:35.680 | I just stepped out, took my suitcase with me.

01:20:40.800 | Was there fire?

01:20:41.800 | No fire.

01:20:42.800 | It left the plane there, and the two guys that was in the back one of them broke his

01:20:45.000 | thumb, and it was with the barrels.

01:20:46.980 | And they had to put a hose, a tie gas hose together to shimmy down to get out.

01:20:52.440 | Yeah.

01:20:53.440 | So-- That's an incredible story.

01:20:55.560 | Well, let me just tell you, it had a little bit more to it.

01:20:58.120 | I learned to fly with the idea of being a missionary aviation fellowship pilot.

01:21:02.600 | Fly the missionaries in and out of the jungle.

01:21:04.440 | Well, I went 11 days through that jungle.

01:21:06.520 | The rest of them went on down the road and went to prison.

01:21:09.040 | I said, "I'll crawl on my belly six months, a year, a year, eating snakes before I'm going

01:21:13.680 | down the road."

01:21:14.960 | So I went in there, and I was 11 days in the jungle.

01:21:18.280 | And I finally came to a place, and it had airplanes.

01:21:21.600 | I kept asking the Indian, "Donde esta el avion?"

01:21:24.080 | I wanted to steal an airplane and get out of there.

01:21:26.760 | And when I came to the place, I asked, "What is this place?

01:21:30.200 | Lovely place.

01:21:31.200 | It looked like Honolulu in World War II."

01:21:33.840 | There was a runway there.

01:21:35.120 | He said, "You don't know.

01:21:36.880 | This is Loma Linda headquarters for Missionary Aviation Fellowship for the Amazon."

01:21:41.880 | And they flew me out.

01:21:44.320 | You escaped from prison five times.

01:21:49.040 | So what stands out to you as the most difficult or miraculous escape in the bunch?

01:21:58.720 | The most, like, miraculous was when I was in the courtroom in Spain.

01:22:01.720 | I think I was on the third floor of Real High, and I ran across the courtroom, handcuffed,

01:22:06.960 | kicked the window out.

01:22:07.960 | And I looked down, and it was above the palm trees.

01:22:10.480 | I thought there might be a power line or something I could grab on as I went down.

01:22:13.960 | There was nothing.

01:22:14.960 | And there was a car parked, a station wagon on the--

01:22:18.000 | You just jumped out?

01:22:19.560 | I jumped out from 31 feet and on top of that car.

01:22:22.800 | And it exploded in the street.

01:22:24.640 | The windshield went over three or four cars.

01:22:26.680 | It looked like snow going up, and I looked like Donald Duck with the thing coming out.

01:22:31.000 | And handcuffed, and I got out.

01:22:32.240 | And you just kept running?

01:22:33.240 | Yeah, I kept running.

01:22:34.240 | They ran me down, hit me in the back.

01:22:35.800 | I still got a dead spot in my back where the policeman hit me with a shotgun.

01:22:40.040 | And they brought me back.

01:22:41.480 | Everybody was there.

01:22:42.480 | They were saying, "Your husband is crazy."

01:22:44.680 | That was spectacular.

01:22:45.680 | But I escaped from Lübeck, maximum security prison, and I cut out of there and got out.

01:22:50.720 | That was a miraculous escape.

01:22:51.720 | And that was where?

01:22:52.720 | In Lübeck, Germany.

01:22:53.720 | What was that escape like?

01:22:56.480 | I was there, and they were going to extradite me back to the United States where I still

01:23:00.560 | had all these charges and 25 years special parole.

01:23:04.640 | And I was cleaning the lawyer's visiting room, and on it was bars that looked like

01:23:13.760 | piano notes or this way to make it pretty.

01:23:17.080 | But there was a little bit.

01:23:19.080 | So I got a rope from a guy where they made boats in there, and I had 20 minutes.

01:23:25.940 | So I went in there, and I wrapped it around, and I put a broom handle in it that was cut

01:23:29.080 | off and wrapped it around until they pulled the bars together on that side.

01:23:33.120 | And then I pulled them together on the other side.

01:23:34.400 | But that only put me inside the prison yard where the soccer equipment was kept.

01:23:40.800 | But they were putting new windows on one side of the prison, and they had it scaffolded

01:23:45.200 | up to the fourth floor.

01:23:47.540 | So there was a little recess there, and there was guard towers every 100 feet or so.

01:23:52.000 | I mean, they would shoot and kill you.

01:23:53.940 | So I got behind that and climbed up holding to the bricks on one hand and the scaffolding

01:23:58.960 | on the other and went to the roof.

01:24:00.480 | I lost my shirt and most of my clothes going through the window.

01:24:03.000 | I got all the skin off of me.

01:24:04.480 | I thought I was going to die.

01:24:05.880 | And I was trying to go sideways like this, and finally I got a grip, and the bars let

01:24:09.600 | me through and took all the skin off of me.

01:24:12.480 | So I got up on that roof, and I have asthma, and I just lay there trying to catch my breath.

01:24:16.800 | Didn't bring my inhaler.

01:24:17.800 | So I mean--

01:24:18.800 | Dr. Mark McClellan With blood everywhere.

01:24:19.800 | Dr. Mark McClellan Oh, I was bloody, yes.

01:24:22.720 | And so I got down to the end, and on the end, the reason I did it, they were putting a new

01:24:27.560 | wall again around the prison to make it larger.

01:24:33.040 | And they had taken all the wire off above the sally port where they could join the two

01:24:37.800 | walls together, and I saw that when I came up.

01:24:41.280 | And there was a guard, a half of a--like a dome sticking out of that brick building where

01:24:46.560 | there's a guard there with a gun, and he'd kill you.

01:24:48.560 | I mean, he was made--he was surely trained to kill you.

01:24:51.160 | And we had some bad people in that place.

01:24:54.080 | So I lay up one floor above it, and I saw a guard and his wife come with a double umbrella.

01:24:58.920 | It was just pouring down rain.

01:25:00.800 | Here I am without a shirt on, bloody.

01:25:03.280 | And he had a little boy--she had a little boy with him under that double umbrella.

01:25:07.360 | I knew him.

01:25:08.360 | And when he come--and she started back from the sally port.

01:25:10.720 | I hit the top of that guard tower, bam, with both feet.

01:25:15.360 | And I jumped, I guess, it's three more floors.

01:25:17.200 | I jumped.

01:25:18.200 | There was a pile of sand, like a cone where they were digging it there.

01:25:21.440 | And I hit that, and my feet buried up to the knees, but I didn't fall.

01:25:26.200 | And I ran straight towards her so he couldn't shoot me.

01:25:28.960 | And then I went around some bushes and went downhill.

01:25:33.160 | And then I heard, "Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam," behind me.

01:25:35.880 | And I looked, and that fool woman was in a big old car, and she was knocking down the

01:25:39.280 | parking meters behind me.

01:25:41.280 | She was trying to run over me.

01:25:42.780 | And I ran behind the car, and she tore the fender off of her car, trying and yelling,

01:25:48.160 | "Yap, yap, yap," and a terrible evil-looking face at me, screaming at me, and the sirens

01:25:52.680 | going off in the prison.

01:25:55.040 | And there was a fence there, a wall, and I jumped up on it to jump over.

01:25:59.040 | And it had glass embedded, and I cut my hands and my arms all up getting over that.

01:26:03.560 | And I hit the ground on the other side, and it was like--it was that muck where some farmer

01:26:08.440 | had dug it.

01:26:09.440 | I dug in there, and Marty had slipped me $200 into prison, and I had that in my shoe, and

01:26:13.840 | I lost my shoes in that muck.

01:26:15.320 | Anyway, I got out of there and got to Holland.

01:26:17.960 | Any heck of a story how I did that.

01:26:20.800 | What was prison like, whether it's Germany or whether it's Australia?

01:26:25.280 | What were some of the darker moments in prison?

01:26:28.240 | The United States prisons are awful, awful, evil places now.

01:26:32.480 | Just really, there's nothing nice about them.

01:26:34.960 | There's the guards-- In L.A.?

01:26:38.520 | In every one I went to.

01:26:40.240 | It seemed like the further east.

01:26:41.680 | I went to Oklahoma, and it was nicer.

01:26:43.440 | But all of them on the west coast, there was hatred there, and they got really stupid people

01:26:48.920 | hired just incredibly.

01:26:50.400 | Oh, hatred by the guards.

01:26:53.240 | And the inmates.

01:26:54.240 | Like, I speak Spanish, and I walked into the Spanish TV room, and it would send you a note,

01:27:00.000 | "You can't come in here."

01:27:02.200 | And I walked across to the black, "Hey, get out of here," white boy.

01:27:06.200 | It was just like, "What?

01:27:07.520 | Man, I like all you people, you know?"

01:27:10.440 | And so I walked down to the white people, and they said, "Show us your paperwork.

01:27:14.000 | You can't come in here until you show your paperwork.

01:27:16.640 | We don't let snitches and homosexuals and all this sort of stuff in here."

01:27:21.280 | So it's just like, "Man, I don't want to be in here."

01:27:25.440 | I mean, it sounds absurd, but you're saying the basic humanity is gone.

01:27:30.080 | Completely.

01:27:31.080 | Completely.

01:27:32.080 | And the guards, it was just like, "Come here, Reeves."

01:27:35.080 | And I walk up to him, "Get the fuck out of my face."

01:27:37.520 | He sticks his chin out, like for me to break his jaw.

01:27:40.080 | Yeah.

01:27:41.080 | Like, "What in the world, man?

01:27:44.040 | I love people."

01:27:45.040 | Yeah, you got this joy to you.

01:27:48.440 | You have a joyful nature.

01:27:51.720 | And it didn't seem like that broke you.

01:27:53.760 | Not a bit.

01:27:54.960 | How did you persevere?

01:27:55.960 | Did you know, I didn't even think I persevered, but I try to enjoy my life wherever I am every

01:28:00.680 | day.

01:28:01.680 | I do.

01:28:02.680 | I ran every day, and like I told you, "Why do you run so, Roger?"

01:28:06.160 | I said, "To help me suffer these fools."

01:28:08.600 | And I played a game of chess every day, almost of my life in there.

01:28:12.360 | And I read two books a week.

01:28:14.560 | And I talked with people, storytellers, guys would come in, "Tell us another story, Roger.

01:28:18.960 | Give us a poem.

01:28:19.960 | Tell us one you never told us before."

01:28:21.560 | And so it was just nice.

01:28:22.560 | A lot of them Aboriginal boys, they picked their country music, and it was all right.

01:28:29.160 | Read Morgan Freeman's character in The Shawshank Redemption, says the following, "These walls

01:28:35.800 | are funny.

01:28:37.040 | First you hate them, then you get used to them.

01:28:39.600 | Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.

01:28:43.240 | That's institutionalized."

01:28:45.840 | Is there truth to that?

01:28:46.840 | A hundred percent.

01:28:47.840 | I didn't even see the walls, except whenever I was planning on escaping.

01:28:51.760 | In Shawshank Redemption, he spent so many years in prison that he almost didn't know

01:28:57.520 | what to do with himself once he left, once he was a free man.

01:29:04.080 | That's the, you get so used to the system, the rituals, having to follow orders, even

01:29:15.760 | being treated poorly, all those kinds of things that you become dependent on.

01:29:20.320 | Well down in Australia, I spent the first a little over a year in the shoe.

01:29:26.600 | It was like, did you see the movie The Silence of the Lambs?

01:29:31.280 | Thank you, Marty.

01:29:32.280 | And he's there, and I had five or six guards looking at me with one way mirror.

01:29:37.080 | And that's whenever I thought I might never get out, I got a life sentence.

01:29:40.000 | I had all this time waiting here in Germany.

01:29:43.240 | And so they had a computer in there, but it didn't have a program on it.

01:29:50.120 | And I wrote, so I just started writing these little stories, that's what I did in my life.

01:29:53.720 | And I wrote one line, and I wrote over a million words with them looking at me.

01:29:58.080 | So it was after a year, they let me out.

01:29:59.960 | And it wasn't long before they put me in a place called self-care.

01:30:04.360 | And particularly, I was in what they call the lifers pod.

01:30:07.960 | There was 268 men in self-care there.

01:30:10.960 | And it was unbelievably good that we were left alone, basically.

01:30:18.160 | They was there, or the guards were certainly there, but they had their shack, and we had

01:30:22.680 | apartments, four apartments to the building.

01:30:27.000 | And six men to the unit with your own door and a key to it, and a kitchen, dining room,

01:30:32.400 | freezer, refrigerator.

01:30:34.160 | And they gave you, allowed you $360 a week to buy groceries.

01:30:38.500 | And I cooked for about 16 years, and learned to cook good.

01:30:43.200 | And the people, and other people have their specialties.

01:30:46.880 | And so that was quite, it wasn't so like being in prison.

01:30:53.200 | It was somewhat living with me, and it was difficult, man.

01:30:55.560 | I had some good fights and carry on, but you don't get along with everybody.

01:31:00.760 | But then whenever I came back to the United States, I was laughing and talking.

01:31:05.640 | And when I got off the plane in LA, I had three marshals with me from Australia.

01:31:11.080 | I was slammed upside the wall.

01:31:13.000 | I mean hard, put my ankle, my back's on, and handcuffed so tight till they cut my leg off.

01:31:21.360 | Face forward, face forward, hands apart.

01:31:23.960 | Good gracious.

01:31:25.240 | And walked me 50 steps, and turned me over to the marshals, and they took part of that

01:31:29.400 | off.

01:31:30.400 | That was a border patrol that was there over my marijuana charge from 1977.

01:31:36.320 | I did 11 years for parole violation.

01:31:38.560 | Now they want me for more violation.

01:31:40.460 | And they put me in, down in Los Angeles, they put me in, the marshals put me in there, and

01:31:45.600 | they put me in isolation.

01:31:46.600 | I thought, "What in the world they got me for isolation for?

01:31:50.040 | I done anything."

01:31:53.280 | How long did you spend in isolation?

01:31:55.600 | More than six months.

01:31:57.280 | So I, after three or four days, the little Judas window slide open, and a man, a nice

01:32:03.240 | looking man in a suit come there.

01:32:04.720 | "Hello Reeves, I just want to see what you look like.

01:32:07.440 | I saw your National Geographic documentary, and it does me pleasure to keep you in isolation."

01:32:12.480 | And he slammed the thing, and I couldn't get out of there.

01:32:15.320 | And by law, the US Parole Commission is supposed to give you a hearing within 90 days.

01:32:20.360 | Tamari paid a lawyer $7,500, and he never picked up the phone.

01:32:25.640 | Somebody got to him.

01:32:28.800 | Who's that somebody you think?

01:32:29.960 | Christopher Cannon was his name, and I don't know who got to him, but he didn't do anything

01:32:34.400 | to get me out of there.

01:32:35.760 | I got one 15 minute phone call a month, and I couldn't get out.

01:32:40.720 | So then after six months, they shipped me to, put me on Con Air.

01:32:47.680 | Little shackled and black box on my hands, and I went to Oklahoma, and they let me out

01:32:54.440 | on the floor.

01:32:55.440 | I couldn't imagine, then I could call after a couple of days, and they said, "There was

01:33:02.840 | a man here from Washington give you a parole hearing.

01:33:05.560 | You only got here at 3.30."

01:33:07.200 | So he left.

01:33:08.200 | He said he'd be back next year.

01:33:09.200 | What?

01:33:10.200 | I've been in there over six months.

01:33:13.160 | So then there was a lovely little lady.

01:33:14.680 | She was a case manager or something.

01:33:16.920 | She said, "You can ask for a parole on the record."

01:33:19.040 | I said, "Please do."

01:33:20.040 | She said, "I'll send them an email."

01:33:22.920 | The next day I got my parole.

01:33:24.640 | 90 days later, they sent me to Terminal Island and put me in the place there with the infilade,

01:33:29.760 | I guess, since I'm as old as I am, 78 years old.

01:33:32.800 | So they put me in people in there dying, and wheelchairs and legs off and arms off and

01:33:37.240 | cancer.

01:33:38.240 | So I was in there, and I pushed the fellas around.

01:33:42.120 | I come out of the chow hall there, and I went to go to the right to get me a haircut.

01:33:46.680 | There were two Mexican guys there, a lieutenant and another one, between us.

01:33:50.360 | He went like, "Boop, boop, boop."

01:33:51.720 | I said, "I could outrun you."

01:33:53.760 | They slammed me, put me on the ground, handcuffed me, and put me in the shoe for a week.

01:33:59.160 | I got out, and man, they put me back in the place.

01:34:02.200 | They treated me rough.

01:34:04.240 | So I got in a little more trouble, and they put me back in the shoe, and I wouldn't come

01:34:09.840 | out.

01:34:10.840 | They had that...

01:34:12.440 | The virus was out killing people.

01:34:14.120 | So they killed eight people in that unit I was in.

01:34:15.960 | So, I mean, I wouldn't even come out to take a shower.

01:34:19.760 | I had a little straw that I put in the sink, and I'd take a sock that I had and scrub myself

01:34:25.960 | with it with some soap and glass of water over my head, and then clean the floor up

01:34:29.680 | and put it in the toilet.

01:34:30.680 | So that was your time during the coronavirus pandemic.

01:34:33.760 | I got out last April, right in the middle of it, and they were dying bad in there.

01:34:40.480 | So I was treated worse for that last year in America than I was for the whole 20 years

01:34:43.960 | in Australia, the 18 years in Australia.

01:34:46.760 | And then you were a free man at the end of that year.

01:34:50.800 | They put me out and sent me home, and the parole officers couldn't even come.

01:34:54.600 | They weren't working.

01:34:55.600 | They were just doing everything by video.

01:34:57.200 | Said, "Better not have a drink."

01:35:00.040 | The only thing was I couldn't even have a drink of wine.

01:35:03.700 | So after a year, I had to take psychiatric treatment every week.

01:35:09.160 | I had to go talk to the psychiatrist, psychologist, and me and her got along great.

01:35:14.280 | She was a good Christian woman.

01:35:15.560 | We just chatted and talked.

01:35:16.560 | And I think they said, so I had to pee in the bottle every week.

01:35:19.200 | I said, "I've been in 33 years.

01:35:21.400 | How many piss deaths do you think I've had?

01:35:23.320 | I've never been dirty.

01:35:24.600 | Only thing if y'all want to clean one, you come get me."

01:35:27.400 | Before I talk to you about love, let me ask you a difficult question.

01:35:33.440 | You write in your book, "I don't consider myself much of a criminal.

01:35:37.400 | I don't lie, cheat, or steal, and I always take up for the underdog.

01:35:43.520 | Violence makes me sick.

01:35:45.080 | Yet, I know I'm an outlaw, and those that break the law must be punished."

01:35:51.280 | I think many people listening to this, or some people listening to this, will see you

01:35:56.040 | as a criminal, as a bad man, who increased the amount of suffering in this world.

01:36:00.960 | What do you have to say to them?

01:36:06.040 | I would like to tell them that they have been indoctrinated by the spin of news and politicians,

01:36:12.800 | and they don't know the truth of the situation.

01:36:15.560 | You lay the truth out there in an envelope and let me open it, besides something else

01:36:19.600 | that is false, and it's staggering.

01:36:22.100 | The truth is that I was a tobacco farmer, and tobacco kills 500,000 people a year in

01:36:30.320 | America, and six million have debilitating diseases because of it.

01:36:38.000 | All drugs combined kill between 10,000 and 15,000 people a year by overdose, and 60%

01:36:44.160 | of those are pharmaceutical.

01:36:46.680 | Now then, when I was a tobacco farmer, come sit on the front pew, Mr. Reeves.

01:36:50.360 | Come on up here, you gentlemen.

01:36:52.220 | You just joined the Masonic Lodge, and you joined our church, and you just come on and

01:36:56.400 | sit down with the good people.

01:36:58.260 | You grow two marijuana plants, get out of here, you scumbag.

01:37:02.640 | Marijuana doesn't hurt anybody.

01:37:05.400 | That's the truth of it.

01:37:09.400 | In your career, you walked amidst violence, but you never participated in the violence.

01:37:18.040 | I didn't even see it.

01:37:22.000 | Just didn't happen around me.

01:37:23.000 | In prison, it did.

01:37:24.000 | I sewed people up.

01:37:25.000 | They called me Doc.

01:37:26.000 | I had dental floss.

01:37:29.880 | One time I had to get a blade and try to help keep them from my patient, from getting again.

01:37:39.200 | If I shot at those people, I shot at them to keep them from killing me.

01:37:42.720 | I certainly didn't mean to kill them.

01:37:46.760 | Some people are evil, and they will kill you and hurt you, lie to you.

01:37:49.720 | I just don't do any of that.

01:37:51.480 | It just makes you sick.

01:37:54.200 | When I was in the shoe, three guys tried to kill a guy, and they stabbed him so many times,

01:37:57.920 | but their stab went breaking, and the blood getting out of the room.

01:38:01.440 | I said, "You're going to kill him.

01:38:02.440 | You're going to kill him and save his life."

01:38:04.200 | Drug him up there where the guards could see him.

01:38:06.320 | There's stuff like that.

01:38:07.520 | I'm just not of that nature of those people.

01:38:10.040 | They're just evil.

01:38:11.040 | They're people born evil, I believe.

01:38:15.440 | It is heartbreaking to hear that the basic humanity is gone in prison in the United States.

01:38:21.520 | It's heartbreaking because that basic humanity is actually the light at the end of the tunnel.

01:38:25.360 | It's the thing that saves us as opposed to when it's absent, it's the thing that destroys

01:38:30.080 | us.

01:38:31.080 | The prisons are filled, absolutely filled with people that have some mental problems.

01:38:38.440 | You see tent city all the way up and down here.

01:38:40.800 | I guarantee you every one of those people have mental problems to some degree, however

01:38:46.000 | little it is, but they're a little bit off.

01:38:48.800 | When you get a DEA agent that wants to make a name for himself, he goes down there and

01:38:53.320 | gets two of them, one of them to sell a little two grams of methamphetamine to the other

01:38:57.120 | one, and he gets a conviction.

01:39:00.000 | A young prosecutor, he gets a conviction.

01:39:01.920 | He wants to make a judge.

01:39:03.680 | We got the judge in, where was it?

01:39:05.680 | I'm going to give a million, what was his name?

01:39:08.120 | Gilbert.

01:39:09.120 | I'm going to give him in a million years before I get off the judge.

01:39:11.560 | You get fools like that in charge.

01:39:15.840 | You're going to fill prisons up with pitiful humanity.

01:39:21.720 | Those are the ones.

01:39:22.720 | Then the other is people over drugs.

01:39:27.040 | Drugs should be a health issue.

01:39:32.840 | You cannot police it enough.

01:39:36.840 | They know the only thing that overdoses is opioids, the heroin.

01:39:41.440 | If they can give it to them, it costs about a dollar a day to give the worst addict his

01:39:44.920 | fix, but they'll give it methadone, which is from a pharmaceutical company, which is

01:39:49.960 | just as bad.

01:39:51.640 | Why in the world?

01:39:52.640 | We tried it all over the world, in Portugal and England.

01:39:57.840 | When they give the girls clean up, no more stolen cars.

01:40:02.840 | Why?

01:40:03.840 | Who wants to keep this farce going?

01:40:07.280 | They're just perpetuating it like, "Oh, every little police place is getting all these suits

01:40:13.520 | and armor and machine guns."

01:40:15.400 | It's just like, "Oh, it's such a spin.

01:40:18.480 | It's sad."

01:40:19.480 | Do you think all drugs should be legalized?

01:40:23.440 | I don't know about that, but they certainly should be controlled.

01:40:25.960 | If a person is an addict, he should be able to go down and get his fix with somebody there

01:40:32.840 | to help him with a clean needle and a glass of orange juice.

01:40:36.120 | It's so much cheaper than prison.

01:40:38.200 | It's so much cheaper than him stealing cars or prostitute having to go to work.

01:40:43.040 | That's sad.

01:40:44.040 | You've lived one heck of a life.

01:40:48.160 | Looking back, there's a lot of young people that listen to this, high school, college

01:40:55.000 | students.

01:40:56.080 | What advice would you give them?

01:40:57.800 | How to live, how to have a successful career, how to have a good life, how to be a good

01:41:04.400 | man, a woman?

01:41:08.000 | To be a good man or woman, if I had it to do over with, I'll just tell you what I'd

01:41:13.320 | have done.

01:41:14.320 | I would have paid attention and studied my lesson and did the best I could.

01:41:19.640 | In school?

01:41:20.640 | In school, yes, and went as far as I could have.

01:41:23.000 | I would have liked to have been a doctor.

01:41:24.400 | I just didn't have the stickability or anybody to tell me, "Hey, go over there and do that."

01:41:29.960 | If you can do that at a very young age, start in a trade.

01:41:35.000 | Learn to do something.

01:41:36.000 | It doesn't matter what it is.

01:41:38.320 | If you learn to do something good, there is a great demand for you.

01:41:43.880 | I would say that in prison, the prison system should come in and you get a thief, young

01:41:49.640 | fans of thief, a robber.

01:41:52.640 | You say, "All right, we need carpenters.

01:41:56.540 | We need plumbers.

01:41:57.540 | We need electricians.

01:41:58.540 | We need sheep."

01:41:59.540 | Sentence them to that trade.

01:42:02.280 | When you get an A plus in that, where you can go out and make you $30 or $50 an hour,

01:42:06.480 | you go home.

01:42:07.480 | Now, you can mess around 10 years if you want to, or you can do this in two.

01:42:11.800 | I think that's just for the prison.

01:42:14.920 | But anyway, I would say that they find somebody and be true to them, that we have just be

01:42:22.640 | honest and true in your life.

01:42:25.780 | You mean like relationships, friendships?

01:42:27.400 | Relationships, yes.

01:42:28.400 | I mean, so many, so many people, particularly our children, are from relationships where

01:42:36.280 | they're not wanted.

01:42:37.280 | They're divorced.

01:42:38.280 | Their father's left.

01:42:39.280 | They don't know who their daddy is.

01:42:40.280 | They're distant foster homes.

01:42:42.200 | Five hundred thousand children are in foster homes in America today.

01:42:47.840 | Our government inadvertently isn't encouraging those people.

01:42:51.520 | My daughter is a doctor, and she delivered a couple years ago a baby from a 10-year-old

01:42:57.000 | child.

01:42:58.440 | That child, and she said in the visiting room, is four generations, all of them on welfare.

01:43:03.320 | Now we got one more, and it reminds me of Elvis Presley's song, "In the Ghetto."

01:43:08.480 | So for an individual, learn a trade, become a craftsman of sorts, and find somebody to

01:43:18.320 | love and who loves you.

01:43:19.880 | That's right.

01:43:20.880 | Have a family and stick with it.

01:43:24.840 | Surely, you're going to get angry.

01:43:27.160 | You're going to get disappointed.

01:43:28.160 | You're going to get all kinds of stuff, but come back and make up before you go to sleep.

01:43:33.440 | Well, I did half of those things.

01:43:37.040 | I got the first one.

01:43:38.040 | I'm working on the second one, so I appreciate the advice.

01:43:41.400 | Well, Mari, thank you so much for joining us.

01:43:45.480 | Can you tell me the story of how you two met?

01:43:48.720 | Well, my parents every summer would go to the lake in Canada, and the place was called

01:43:55.360 | Turkey Point, which is on Lake Erie, and just have a nice summer holiday there, water skiing,

01:44:01.840 | swimming, sunbathing.

01:44:03.760 | This was back in the '60s, and I was sitting on the pier with a few girlfriends and telling

01:44:08.800 | them my story.

01:44:09.800 | Then all of a sudden, I looked up and I saw this figure in the distance coming onto the

01:44:17.160 | pier.

01:44:18.160 | Now, we're all dressed in bathing suits and swimwear, and we're swimming and this, that,

01:44:22.400 | and the other, and here he comes, dark trousers.

01:44:25.280 | In fact, they were black, white shirt, and a tie, and a straw kind of a Panama hat.

01:44:36.000 | So he stood out, and so I invited him to come and sit down.

01:44:41.840 | So he continued to talk, and we just talked and talked and talked, and then later moved

01:44:46.120 | to the beach.

01:44:48.840 | I think the next time I saw him, he was talking to another girl, and I thought, "Yeah, you

01:44:53.200 | know, nah."

01:44:54.200 | Yeah, men.

01:44:55.200 | I know.

01:44:56.200 | I was, "Okay, okay, next."

01:44:58.200 | Well, about six months later, I receive a letter, and it's a letter from Roger.

01:45:05.360 | Then we start this lovely correspondence, and we just start writing.

01:45:09.000 | In those days, you just wrote everything.

01:45:13.080 | And then the next summer, he was coming up again.

01:45:16.240 | He was on his way to Alaska, and he says, "I would like to come by and see you."

01:45:22.520 | And I said, "Well, I'll be in the same place that I met you last year."

01:45:26.360 | And so when he came up this time, for some reason, Roger reached for my hand, and I reached

01:45:33.160 | for his, and man, that was it.

01:45:36.520 | It was like love at first touch.

01:45:40.320 | It was just like a silence, and a, "Oh my gosh."

01:45:46.160 | We didn't even look at each other.

01:45:47.440 | It was just, "Oh my goodness, what happened here?"

01:45:50.240 | And I was the type of person, I never wanted to get married, way, way, way down the road,

01:45:55.000 | never have any children, and I wanted to see the world first, and then do all that.

01:46:02.320 | But that was it.

01:46:03.320 | That was love, and you've been together ever since.

01:46:07.720 | Yeah.

01:46:08.720 | The thing is about the love that the two of you have for each other is it had to persevere

01:46:14.440 | through quite a heck of a journey.

01:46:18.080 | So how did Roger's drug smuggling change the nature of your love and your relationship?

01:46:27.320 | Well, Lex, that remained steadfast.

01:46:32.240 | It endured.

01:46:34.440 | And since Roger's been home, I think we've rekindled the love that we had when we first

01:46:39.920 | met.

01:46:42.400 | But I think my faith, my steadfast faith, and also the fact that Roger and I communicated.

01:46:51.960 | We wrote letters.

01:46:53.960 | He never complained.

01:46:54.960 | I know there were the children there.

01:46:57.160 | He never had mistreated me.

01:46:58.760 | I love this guy.

01:46:59.760 | And we had a lot of experiences.

01:47:02.120 | It was just even though I-- He's good looking, charismatic.

01:47:05.280 | He's pretty, you know.

01:47:06.280 | Yeah.

01:47:07.280 | And he was adventurous, you know.

01:47:10.280 | Adventurous.

01:47:11.280 | Would you say that again?

01:47:14.560 | But yes, it was just, I know I missed him physically, but we were just so strong in

01:47:22.320 | spirit, you know, and we could talk to one another.

01:47:28.360 | Yeah.

01:47:29.520 | What was it like, Roger, when you're a free man seeing Mari for the first time in person

01:47:38.400 | again?

01:47:39.400 | I cried for three days.

01:47:42.360 | Everything I'd look at a picture of her, I came home and there she prepared a meal for

01:47:47.760 | me.

01:47:49.320 | And it was the old oak table that I'd redone and the chairs, the same one, and the green

01:47:56.080 | placemats and the same china that we had and the same silverware.

01:48:01.400 | And it just, all of it just brought back the same paintings on the wall.

01:48:04.600 | It was just like unbelievable.

01:48:06.080 | After 35 years, she had all my clothes cleaned and my shoes shining.

01:48:11.080 | And I put the shoes on and I walked out on the strings and the soles came off.

01:48:16.200 | But the shirts and all fit perfect and everything.

01:48:18.560 | So it was just wonderful.

01:48:19.960 | And just to see her and then just to think about, see her picture of her 50th birthday

01:48:24.560 | or her 60th birthday or her 70th birthday.

01:48:28.280 | I wasn't there.

01:48:29.280 | And the picture of her and with the children, it just, it was heartbreaking.

01:48:33.240 | And about the third day, I thought, man up, fella.

01:48:35.600 | I mean, you've got to.

01:48:37.400 | So I got over it and quit the tears.

01:48:42.200 | But it was, everything was just pulsating with life.

01:48:45.640 | It was just unbelievable to get out of that place.

01:48:48.880 | It really was.

01:48:51.960 | Is there, do you regret the drug smuggling that took you away from the woman you love?

01:49:01.400 | Oh, yes.

01:49:03.000 | 100%.

01:49:04.000 | Just, I wouldn't have done it again if, you don't think you're going to get caught.

01:49:11.520 | And it's just, no, it's just, I did it for money and I had everything in the world I

01:49:15.960 | wanted before I did that.

01:49:18.360 | So the adventure, I mean, it was one heck of an adventure for the two of you, for the

01:49:24.000 | both of you.

01:49:25.000 | Yes.

01:49:26.000 | Were you able to enjoy it or was it always danger?

01:49:30.040 | Was it always something that threatened your relationship, your love, your family?

01:49:35.160 | Or were you able to enjoy the adventure of it?

01:49:37.560 | You know, we'll all die.

01:49:39.280 | Life is short.

01:49:40.640 | And to live that kind of adventure.

01:49:42.560 | Well, whenever I did the first loot, I got $10,000.

01:49:46.440 | And that was just about two years pay on the fire department take home.

01:49:50.720 | And I brought that home and-

01:49:52.240 | I put my hand over my mouth.

01:49:54.080 | I said, "Roger, I can't believe this."

01:49:57.080 | I had probably 20,000 money.

01:49:58.760 | And Mari like, "Oh my, what in the world?"

01:50:00.880 | And Roger said, "Let's go have dinner."

01:50:03.560 | And so we went to the little restaurant that we would go to, you know, and he said, "And

01:50:08.200 | don't you dare look on the right hand side of the menu."

01:50:11.440 | He said, "Just order anything you want."

01:50:15.960 | And it was just as we were in the restaurant, you know, it was just we were giddy about

01:50:19.480 | it.

01:50:20.480 | Yeah, I was giddy about it.

01:50:24.120 | Were you afraid that, I mean, did you think about the fact that it's illegal and Roger

01:50:30.480 | can end up in prison?

01:50:32.480 | Oh, yes.

01:50:34.280 | Did you guys talk about it?

01:50:35.680 | Well, I just, I kind of thought I was bulletproof.

01:50:38.600 | I mean, they didn't catch you.

01:50:40.040 | I thought if they didn't catch you, you was all right.

01:50:41.600 | And it was hard to get you.

01:50:43.880 | Hard to catch you in the air.

01:50:45.600 | You never thought, hard to catch you in the air.

01:50:50.120 | I didn't know that if your friend told on you five years later, you'd still go to prison.

01:50:54.760 | That was a problem.

01:50:55.760 | I didn't know that.

01:50:57.440 | Did you guys ever talk about walking away?

01:51:00.600 | I asked Roger to walk away.

01:51:03.480 | He says, "I can't, Mario, just now."

01:51:06.800 | And then of course, the amount of people that he began to support, the family and the gifts

01:51:13.600 | and the deals.

01:51:15.240 | The deals, yes, the deals.

01:51:17.600 | Big ones.

01:51:18.600 | Yes.

01:51:19.600 | And then you always wanted to do, what do you do with the money?

01:51:22.640 | You know, so you want to, I guess you clean it up or you want to invest in an enterprise

01:51:29.320 | or in a business.

01:51:31.120 | Well, it just doesn't work.

01:51:33.160 | They know the source of it and they take it and run.

01:51:37.720 | Every one of them.

01:51:38.720 | Yeah.

01:51:39.720 | Yeah.

01:51:40.720 | And they're very generous, extremely generous and benevolent.

01:51:45.280 | And when I started, I would ask about it.

01:51:48.200 | I went to a lawyer and a good number of people in California at that time wanted to legalize

01:51:53.920 | marijuana back in 1973.

01:51:57.440 | And I went to a lawyer and I says, "Mr. Lawyer, I put $100 on the table.

01:52:01.360 | What would they do if I caught me bringing marijuana across the border?"

01:52:04.840 | He said, "If you have a criminal record?"

01:52:06.720 | I said, "No, I've never had a speeding ticket.

01:52:09.600 | Nothing.

01:52:10.600 | Not even a traffic ticket."

01:52:12.120 | He said, "You work for the fire department out in Los Angeles?"

01:52:15.760 | I said, "Yes, sir."

01:52:16.760 | He said, "You'll get probation.

01:52:19.040 | The worst you'll do is you'll get one year and you'll spend four months raking leaves

01:52:24.000 | on a military base."

01:52:25.920 | So my mother and my father died some years before and I brought mother and baby sister

01:52:29.560 | came out and I took them down to Disneyland.

01:52:31.760 | And she said, "What you doing, boy?"

01:52:33.440 | I said, "I'm hauling pot, Ma."

01:52:35.120 | She said, "How much you making?"

01:52:36.120 | I said, "I'm making $40,000 any day I want to go."

01:52:40.240 | And she said, "What do they do if they catch you?"

01:52:41.520 | And I told her, "I brought the lawyer set.

01:52:43.720 | Four months at the most, raking leaves.

01:52:45.480 | What do you think?"

01:52:46.480 | She said, "Do you need a co-pilot, son?"

01:52:48.840 | - Yeah, money is money.

01:52:52.040 | - Yeah.

01:52:53.040 | - So your relationship persevered through some big challenges.

01:53:00.720 | Is there advice you can give about what makes for a successful relationship?

01:53:06.320 | - Oh, well, you know, I think the initial igniting, meeting someone, you know, that's

01:53:15.560 | the love.

01:53:17.480 | That's it.

01:53:18.480 | And that little fire, just that fire just keeps burning and burning and burning.

01:53:23.880 | You can't put it out no matter what.

01:53:26.520 | It's the love fire.

01:53:30.040 | - But it gets difficult.

01:53:31.040 | - It does.

01:53:32.040 | - It's funny, the love fire.

01:53:33.600 | So you're saying the love fire is all it takes to persevere through the difficulties.

01:53:37.320 | - Well, no.

01:53:38.320 | Well, that's a huge part of it.

01:53:40.880 | And also, I contribute my individual situation to, in order to endure the prison years, is

01:53:50.240 | my faith.

01:53:51.240 | - Faith in God?

01:53:53.600 | - Yes.

01:53:55.240 | And friends who are unconditionally still love me no matter what.

01:54:00.480 | Yes.

01:54:02.160 | - So you had love around you in general.

01:54:05.160 | - I did.

01:54:06.160 | And my children, they, you know, and that was a real purpose to guide them and to love

01:54:13.400 | them and to help them become citizens.

01:54:17.400 | - What about you, Roger?

01:54:20.760 | What advice would you give?

01:54:22.680 | - I just don't know how to do it.

01:54:24.000 | I do know that you have to work on a relationship.

01:54:26.240 | Laurie and I have had problems.

01:54:27.880 | I mean, we get really-

01:54:28.880 | - You guys get in fights?

01:54:29.880 | - Oh, yeah.

01:54:30.880 | - Oh, yes.

01:54:31.880 | - Pretty regular.

01:54:32.880 | But not, they don't let them last long.

01:54:36.680 | But certainly, we are so different.

01:54:38.800 | - We're the same and yet we're so different.

01:54:41.400 | Yeah.

01:54:42.400 | - Like little stuff?

01:54:43.400 | - Little stuff, yes.

01:54:45.240 | And it might be big, but I usually win her over.

01:54:50.360 | But anyhow, I just feel like Maria was always there.

01:54:53.580 | It was like she was my anchor.

01:54:56.040 | I was coming home.

01:54:57.320 | I was always coming home to her and the children.

01:55:00.000 | And you can see throughout my life, I'm working on getting there.

01:55:03.440 | - Are you afraid for his life, by the way?

01:55:05.880 | - Oh, yes.

01:55:06.880 | Oh, yeah.

01:55:07.880 | There are times, yeah.

01:55:08.880 | But I had faith in him.

01:55:11.480 | He was an excellent pilot.

01:55:13.480 | For example, I always said, "Roger, if the ship's going down, I'm jumping in the lifeboat

01:55:18.160 | with you because I know we're going to get to shore.

01:55:20.760 | You will save us."

01:55:22.000 | And so I had that faith in him.

01:55:25.000 | I mean, he's a man, but yet he's the one you want to get into the lifeboat with.

01:55:29.960 | - Yeah, definitely.

01:55:31.120 | But then there is Pablo Escobar, one of the most dangerous humans in history, plus the

01:55:37.840 | US government.

01:55:38.840 | - Yep.

01:55:39.840 | - Worst by far.

01:55:43.600 | - Very difficult to get away.

01:55:48.240 | In terms of your faith, how has your faith helped you to be the woman you are in this

01:55:54.240 | relationship and seeing love the way you see it?

01:55:59.520 | - Well, I think my faith gives me hope.

01:56:02.600 | I have lots of hope.

01:56:04.520 | It helps me to dwell on the good side.

01:56:09.520 | You know, whenever I meet someone and there's negative, I try to see why they are like that

01:56:17.280 | or what's the source of all that.

01:56:19.680 | And I try to pull out the good.

01:56:22.480 | I really do.

01:56:23.560 | Not that I'm a goody-goody, but that's what your faith does.

01:56:26.640 | You know, you see them as God sees us.

01:56:31.600 | - How has he changed over the years?

01:56:33.320 | - Roger?

01:56:34.320 | - Yeah.

01:56:35.320 | - He's still the same.

01:56:36.320 | Actually, I like him better now.

01:56:39.520 | He's a little calmer.

01:56:40.520 | - Yeah, he looks crazy.

01:56:41.520 | - Oh, yes.

01:56:42.520 | And happy to be at home where he'll say, "Mari, I am just so happy to be with you here in

01:56:49.640 | this condominium.

01:56:50.920 | I'm content."

01:56:51.920 | Because I used to call him my homing pigeon.

01:56:54.960 | I just have to let him fly.

01:56:56.320 | I couldn't...

01:56:57.320 | No, he has to fly, but he always came home.

01:57:02.760 | - Do you think about the end of this ride, our mortality?

01:57:06.520 | Do you think about your death?

01:57:08.280 | - I do.

01:57:09.280 | Particularly, I'm going to have a heart valve replacement in about seven days where I could

01:57:17.480 | not make it.

01:57:18.480 | It's a very serious operation, and I think about that very much.

01:57:23.520 | And I ask for peace.

01:57:26.600 | I just lost my brother about 10 days ago so unexpectedly, and that really makes you think

01:57:33.960 | of your mortality.

01:57:35.680 | - Are you afraid?

01:57:39.160 | - Somewhat and yet not.

01:57:42.320 | Yeah.

01:57:43.760 | I want to live, Lex.

01:57:45.200 | I want to live.

01:57:47.360 | - This life is fun.

01:57:49.600 | - Yes.

01:57:50.600 | - Do you think about your death, Roger?

01:57:52.520 | - I have visions.

01:57:53.520 | I have visions, and they often happen very, very clear, like what I have seen in the future.

01:58:00.880 | Scientists might call it wormholes, or in the Old Testament, they called it prophets.

01:58:05.240 | But I see sometimes in the future around the corner, as clear as we're sitting right here.

01:58:10.320 | - What's that look like?

01:58:11.680 | - I was on a porch, and I believe I was in Central America place.

01:58:14.960 | I was an old man with khaki pants and a white shirt, and it was a chair with wide arms,

01:58:21.440 | and it was straight, and there's like the beams coming out above my head, and I'm on

01:58:25.440 | the porch.

01:58:26.440 | - Bougainvillea.

01:58:27.440 | - And I have out-of-the-body experiences also.

01:58:33.440 | And I came out of my body, I just floated out of my body and went into a veil, and like

01:58:39.560 | into a mist.

01:58:41.160 | And I believe that's probably why it happened.

01:58:44.040 | - You talk about like it's in your past.

01:58:47.280 | This is your future.

01:58:48.280 | - No, this is in my future.

01:58:50.600 | - This is something he has seen in the past.

01:58:52.200 | - I've seen it in a vision.

01:58:53.200 | - Yeah, in a vision.

01:58:54.200 | - No, I know, but it's funny, just the tense you use, it happened, and yet it's something

01:58:59.680 | that will happen.

01:59:00.680 | - Yes.

01:59:01.680 | - To both are true.

01:59:03.160 | - It's just unbelievable.

01:59:04.160 | And I don't know how many people have it, but I have it.

01:59:07.560 | I walked out of my body just like, just where I could come up to you and look and set up

01:59:11.320 | on the radio.

01:59:12.320 | I used to be at work on the railroad and I had one there.

01:59:14.920 | - How do you explain that?

01:59:15.920 | - I don't know, but--

01:59:16.920 | - What do you think, what the heck is going on in this universe that's possible?

01:59:20.480 | - Oh, I don't know, but certainly a phenomenon that happened.

01:59:25.480 | And there's a guy, Bill Monroe, that wrote the book on out-of-the-body, he tells about

01:59:30.680 | it.

01:59:31.680 | And who was the guy that writes The Alchemist?

01:59:35.160 | - Pablo Coelho.

01:59:37.560 | - He has them also, just like that.

01:59:39.680 | And he tells about how it happens on him, mine happened differently.

01:59:45.240 | But you certainly can come out of your body.

01:59:48.280 | - What do you think the meaning of this life is?

01:59:51.760 | Maybe from your faith, but also from just the amazing adventure that you lived through?

02:00:00.960 | How do you make sense of why the heck we're here?

02:00:05.360 | - I don't know.

02:00:07.480 | It's just kind of like who you are.

02:00:09.160 | Even when I was a child, I was like, "I'm different from other people."

02:00:14.640 | You know?

02:00:15.640 | And just as a boy, I was.

02:00:16.640 | - Could you put into words how you were different or it was just the feeling?

02:00:23.080 | - Yeah, like my brother, I mean, he kept his hands clean and his shoes shining.

02:00:27.400 | Here I was barefooted catching a wild hog or wrestling a horse trying to get it down.

02:00:32.760 | - I saw pictures of you climbing a tree recently.

02:00:35.160 | - Yes, when I first got out of prison, always something like that.

02:00:40.760 | So I don't know.

02:00:43.920 | And I noticed that something about me is sometimes in prison, there'd be a knife fight.

02:00:49.560 | And people just, you see them rough guys that turn white from it.

02:00:55.160 | I just kind of almost like smile.

02:00:56.880 | I mean, unless they come at me, I'll turn white and get away.

02:01:01.240 | But it doesn't bother, those things, it doesn't bother me.

02:01:04.600 | Prison didn't bother me.

02:01:05.600 | - So you don't know what the heck the meaning is.

02:01:08.240 | You just know you're a bit different than the others.

02:01:10.440 | - Yeah, might be a little bit kooky.

02:01:14.440 | - Well, maybe the whole point is you wanna realize, you wanna let that madness flourish,

02:01:21.520 | that uniqueness flourish.

02:01:23.440 | That's the whole point of life.

02:01:24.440 | We're all different in our, in like very interesting little ways.

02:01:27.480 | - Yes.

02:01:28.480 | - And the more different you are, you wanna let that become, you wanna let it be its full

02:01:33.040 | possibility.

02:01:34.040 | - Like a garden, you know, all the different flowers.

02:01:37.640 | - You did mention, you weren't sure if there's a free will or not.

02:01:42.560 | Do you think it's all predetermined?

02:01:44.680 | Or do you think we make our own choices?

02:01:45.680 | - No, we definitely make our own decisions.

02:01:47.280 | I just said if it is, I hope that.

02:01:49.640 | But I know that we make our own decisions.

02:01:51.640 | - Yes, I agree.

02:01:52.800 | - And I know that we are spirits that are living in this flesh.

02:01:57.480 | That's beyond a shadow of a doubt for me.

02:01:59.880 | If you walk out of your body and have out of body experience, you will know it.

02:02:03.360 | - So the body is just the temporary container for something much bigger.

02:02:05.560 | - The spirit lives on eternally with no beginning and no end.

02:02:09.560 | And that's hard to fathom.

02:02:11.920 | This is just a little, this is a shell to contain that spirit.

02:02:15.920 | You know, this is the way we work on earth, you know.

02:02:18.800 | But yeah, I know, I'm an eternal being.

02:02:21.880 | So are you.

02:02:22.880 | - Do you think there's a why to it?

02:02:26.240 | You know, do you think there's a meaning to this life?

02:02:28.920 | - Well, I think the why is beyond my capability of understanding.

02:02:33.720 | It's someone greater than me.

02:02:36.040 | I don't understand it.

02:02:38.560 | But it's awesome.

02:02:40.240 | I just know that it's awesome.

02:02:42.520 | And one day we will know the answers.

02:02:44.360 | Once we get to that crossover to the other side, I think we will understand clearly.

02:02:50.480 | It says, you know, now we see through a glass darkly.

02:02:53.800 | But then when we are face to face with God, we will understand.

02:02:58.560 | And until we know, let's just enjoy this beautiful life while we got it.

02:03:04.320 | - Yes, absolutely.

02:03:05.320 | - And we're meant to.

02:03:06.320 | - That was my gift.

02:03:07.320 | I love everybody and everything.

02:03:09.680 | I do.

02:03:10.680 | And it just, and I'm sorry if I put a stumbling block in anybody's way.

02:03:14.400 | I wouldn't want to.

02:03:16.200 | But these are these things that I just think about, oh, what a hypocritical world we live

02:03:22.720 | in though.

02:03:24.920 | Like most anybody, I'd say, listen, okay, he's a drug dealer.

02:03:28.880 | And I would say most of them are committed adultery.

02:03:31.440 | That's a cardinal sin.

02:03:32.440 | And yet they move, throw rocks at me for moving marijuana or cocaine across the road.

02:03:40.720 | It's just if you saw the two different things, you'd say, what a terrible difference it is.

02:03:45.560 | But we've become conditioned with this mad society that we have.

02:03:51.320 | - You mentioned that your daughter, Miriam, wrote you a poem.

02:03:56.080 | You mind reading it?

02:03:57.080 | - I'd be glad to.

02:03:58.240 | I was doing 11 years up in Lombok Penitentiary, maximum security prison for parole violation

02:04:05.400 | for possession of marijuana in 1977.

02:04:09.000 | They should have given me six months, but they gave me 11 years because they wanted

02:04:11.960 | me for what they call silent beef.

02:04:14.320 | Anyhow, while I was in that dungeon, I received a letter from my daughter, Miriam.

02:04:20.360 | It's called "Daddy's Poem."

02:04:23.080 | A year ago, I became a poet when I wrote your birthday prose.

02:04:27.640 | And here I am today ready to give it another go.

02:04:30.480 | First, I would like to wish you a very happy birthday to be, and to thank you so very much,

02:04:37.160 | for without you, I would not be me.

02:04:39.600 | Secondly, I want to say that your support has been immense.

02:04:43.000 | It has been true, honest, loving, and free of all pretense.

02:04:48.000 | Thirdly, it goes without saying, your love has surpassed all my wrongs, and you always

02:04:54.200 | made me smile with one of your old country songs.

02:04:58.960 | I can remember on Quervo, Daddy, with you holding me in your arms as you sang Jim Reeve

02:05:03.960 | songs and talked about the farm.

02:05:06.520 | I can see you walking through the door from one of your travels far and wide, and the

02:05:10.840 | thought of you coming home, Daddy, kept a twinkle in our eyes.

02:05:15.040 | I can smell you as I did when I used to climb into your bed, and you would talk to me again

02:05:20.080 | about one of the adventures that you led.

02:05:22.760 | I can see me and Mario asleep in one of your airplanes extraordinaire, and remembering

02:05:28.100 | wondering to myself why there wasn't an available chair.

02:05:31.840 | I remember having to meet you and worrying that you wouldn't be there, but you would

02:05:36.520 | pop from behind some counter and give us all a happy scare.

02:05:41.840 | You gave us presents in Key Biscayne, in hotels Pleasure Galore, and three dozen roses as

02:05:47.560 | we came through the airport door.

02:05:50.120 | I can see your face in Amsterdam with the luggage carousel, and you look like a boy

02:05:54.440 | with a secret that you were just dying to tell.

02:05:57.960 | You taught me mathematics in the sands of faraway places, and taught me to sail, and

02:06:02.800 | we left without any traces.

02:06:05.040 | We climbed glaciers in Argentina and saw the blue of the beautiful caves and witnessed

02:06:09.920 | the majestic beauty of such a jaggling maze.

02:06:14.160 | I learned how to change gears on the dirt roads of Brazil.

02:06:17.680 | We ate hot dogs in Paraguay, a memory we smile over still.

02:06:22.040 | We talked about lions, elephants, and bears on the Hacienda in Uruguay, but decided it

02:06:27.360 | was better if to Europe we did fly.

02:06:29.560 | Oh, the old world and all its luxury, what a good time it was.

02:06:34.760 | From South America to the Krasnopolsky, I think we fell in love.

02:06:39.240 | The European jaunt, well, it is considered a book in itself, but it's a story about

02:06:45.200 | beauty and knowledge, suspense, and worldly wealth.

02:06:48.720 | We went from Holland to Sweden, and we went from France to Spain, and I promise you I

02:06:52.960 | have no regrets.

02:06:54.600 | I would definitely do it all again.

02:06:57.360 | I would see the world with you anytime, sir.

02:06:59.440 | There's no doubt in my mind, because being by your side, Daddy, always ensures a wild

02:07:05.200 | good time.

02:07:06.200 | So, our paths took a turn, and we're back in the U.S. of A, but life here isn't so

02:07:11.120 | bad and I'm plump content to stay.

02:07:14.400 | I'm happy to be near you, although I'm not as close as I was before, but because of your

02:07:19.480 | love and encouragement, I've been able to open new doors.

02:07:23.600 | I'm grateful to be in school, and I'm generally happy where I am, and I even like when you

02:07:29.320 | call and tell me to study for the next exam.

02:07:32.960 | What a life you've given me, Daddy.

02:07:34.960 | It's a tremendous and a magical gift.

02:07:37.800 | We already have so many stories to tell.

02:07:40.120 | There are far too many to list.

02:07:42.400 | But I want to thank you again this day with a very big happy birthday to you, and to tell

02:07:47.480 | you just a few more things that I knew in my heart to be true.

02:07:51.080 | That I love you, Daddy, with all of your wrongs and your rights, that you're a head of our

02:07:56.120 | family and you've kept us all bound tight, that you have an honest love in your heart

02:08:01.240 | for God and all mankind, and you truly do believe in yourself when you say it will all

02:08:06.400 | be fine.

02:08:08.280 | I know you will be there to catch me if ever I waver or slip, and I know I'd want you as

02:08:13.760 | captain on any sinking ship.

02:08:16.040 | I also know a new chapter is written.

02:08:19.120 | It's almost time to move on.

02:08:21.740 | It's time to sail another sea and to witness a brand new dawn.

02:08:25.080 | It'll be good to see you at the helm again as you point out our destination, the laughing

02:08:30.400 | dance on the upper deckers while the boat glides through.

02:08:33.920 | It'll be good to see you on the go, as I know you like to be, and to know you can open any

02:08:40.280 | door without any key.

02:08:43.520 | But while we revel in our days together, we will know better than to hurry, because as

02:08:48.440 | you told me many times, life is an incredible journey.

02:08:53.240 | - Wow, that's beautiful.

02:08:56.720 | - Yeah.

02:08:58.520 | - Roger, I'm really honored that you would take the time to visit me in Texas and to

02:09:05.560 | sit down and talk with me.

02:09:06.560 | Thank you so much, Roger.

02:09:07.560 | - Thank you.

02:09:08.560 | - Thanks so much, Mark.

02:09:09.560 | - Thank you, it was a pleasure.

02:09:10.560 | - It's been a real pleasure.

02:09:11.560 | - Yes.

02:09:12.560 | - Beautiful.

02:09:13.560 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Roger Reeves, and thank you to Noom,

02:09:18.440 | Allform, ExpressVPN, Four Sigmatic, and Eight Sleep.

02:09:23.360 | Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

02:09:27.000 | And now let me leave you with some words from Pablo Escobar.

02:09:31.440 | All empires are created of blood and fire.

02:09:36.800 | Thank you for listening.

02:09:37.800 | I hope to see you next time.

02:09:39.000 | - Bye.

02:09:40.000 | - Bye.

02:09:40.000 | You

02:09:42.000 | You

02:09:44.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Roger Reaves: Smuggling Drugs for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel | Lex Fridman Podcast #199

Chapters