Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined with our guest super producer,
Speaker 3: none other than Gnomes Griffin. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know, and we hope this exploration finds
Speaker 3: you well. If you are in your own global neck
Speaker 3: of the woods, or if you consider yourself a tourist abroad,
Speaker 3: We've got a real way for you tonight, folks, real
Speaker 3: weird one. At least it's a real one for the
Speaker 3: real ones out there. There we go. Yeah, that's nice, Noel.
Speaker 3: You're a bit of a tourist right now? How dare you? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I suppose you could say that, Yeah, I am on
Speaker 4: a trip to New York City, But don't I don't
Speaker 4: hang here like a tourist, or I'd like to think
Speaker 4: so at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're a local now at this point, right, you
Speaker 3: know where to go, how to step? You got your
Speaker 3: supreme hat. You're looking good, you're looking.
Speaker 5: To I try to step right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we all remember our earlier series on a
Speaker 3: concept that mystified us unanimously, diplomatic immunity. Part of that
Speaker 3: goes back to the idea that you might be walking
Speaker 3: around anywhere in these United States where we often record
Speaker 3: the show, and you say, I got a parking ticket.
Speaker 3: I have to pay a parking ticket. How do how
Speaker 3: do these swells and these posh folks never have to
Speaker 3: pay parking tickets. We got into this concept of diplomatic community,
Speaker 3: which became a two part series, right, like a two
Speaker 3: chapter episode. How would we explain diplomatic immunity get out
Speaker 3: of jail free card? Right?
Speaker 2: Essentially, Well, it's a very specialized position that someone who
Speaker 2: is working for a different country operating in your country
Speaker 2: wherever you are, they can have they can have these
Speaker 2: these special rules that apply to them, where all of
Speaker 2: the rules in that country where they're operating don't necessarily
Speaker 2: apply to them because they're special, and they can take
Speaker 2: things in and out of a country as long as
Speaker 2: they put it in the right pouch or the right bag,
Speaker 2: or it has the right numbers on it, which is
Speaker 2: really fun and special, and we got into it even
Speaker 2: further when we did I think we did a third one,
Speaker 2: right Ben on what do we call it?
Speaker 3: Shadow diplomacy?
Speaker 2: Shadow diplomacy? That sounds nice.
Speaker 3: That's a great setup. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and thank
Speaker 3: you to everyone who reached out, including multiple tourism boards,
Speaker 3: in response to our episodes on diplomatic immunity. And as
Speaker 3: you said, Matt, shadow diplomacy, it's an ancient sort of
Speaker 3: patch together series of gentlemen's agreements or traditions, and they
Speaker 3: still play a role in the modern world. While we
Speaker 3: were delving into this, we alluded to numerous instances where
Speaker 3: some people will say diplomacy went wrong. So with that tonight,
Speaker 3: we are exploring a specific case of a man that
Speaker 3: may be known to sell. This guy is named Raymond
Speaker 3: Alan Davis. So let's pause for a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 3: and then let's introduce him. Everybody loves Raymond, except for
Speaker 3: you know, Pakistan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and many neighboring countries.
Speaker 3: Well right, right, right, all right, we're doing the break.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. Everybody loves Raymond, right except for
Speaker 3: the countries that Matt mentioned just a second ago. Can
Speaker 3: we learn a little bit more about Raymond Davis.
Speaker 4: We sure can so. First thing, Raymond Davis was not
Speaker 4: born wealthy, unlike the oss Hires of the Golden Age.
Speaker 3: He was not an.
Speaker 4: Elite East Coast blue blood type of fellow. Instead, he
Speaker 4: grew up in big Stone Gap, Virginia, which, in his words,
Speaker 4: was a blink and you miss it type town. Perhaps
Speaker 4: could be considered by some like a flyover country type situation,
Speaker 4: not in the Midwest, but still similar concept. Coal country
Speaker 4: is what you might call it, isolated in the mountains
Speaker 4: and to a large degree, very much hidden away from
Speaker 4: the rest of the world, both geographically and politically, and.
Speaker 5: Just really as an idea of a place that exists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we said, his family was not wealthy.
Speaker 2: They were getting by. If you look in certain places,
Speaker 2: you'll see that his father was a coal miner. You
Speaker 2: also read about a stint as a bricklayer, also about
Speaker 2: all of the jobs that his mother took on to
Speaker 2: support the family when his father got injured, and just
Speaker 2: you know, the struggles of trying to make enough money
Speaker 2: to sustain what she got, not trying to reach for
Speaker 2: anything huge and big out in the distance. Right. The
Speaker 2: accumulation of wealth or something. It's let's get by.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And these are fantastic points to bring up
Speaker 3: in the biography. So to be clear, this is not
Speaker 3: a situation wherein Old Wild Bill Donovan drops by you know,
Speaker 3: Princeton or Harvard or something and says, who wants to
Speaker 3: have an adventure over there? You know, with World War two.
Speaker 3: This is a kid, He's very much a child at
Speaker 3: this point who has a rough start. As we're saying,
Speaker 3: he is, by the way, an award winning bricklayer. He
Speaker 3: won a competition on that front, and he's as a teen,
Speaker 3: he's shoveling snow, he's chopping wood, all to make sure
Speaker 3: that his family can stay aflat. He has two siblings,
Speaker 3: a mother and a father, so there are a lot
Speaker 3: of people to support, and like so many other kids
Speaker 3: in rural Appalachia, he wants to see the wider world.
Speaker 3: And the best chance he has to pursue this dream
Speaker 3: is the Armed Forces. So originally Raymond wants to join
Speaker 3: up with the Marines. Noel can give us an urah
Speaker 3: urrah if you will perfect we did.
Speaker 2: Let's also remember that he's a big dude and he
Speaker 2: Raymond plays football, he does wrestling, and he ex sells
Speaker 2: at both of those things where he's an imposing force physically.
Speaker 3: The Armed Forces recruiters are not liking him for the Marines.
Speaker 3: As he says in his later biography, The Or Autobiography,
Speaker 3: the recruiters get this. They wanted toll skinny kids to
Speaker 3: be Marines, and he was. This is a quote built
Speaker 3: like a tree stump. So he is the opposite of
Speaker 3: what the recruiters have in mind. And initially they tell him, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're not gonna say no to any kid who wants
Speaker 3: to join up with the war machine. You are going
Speaker 3: to be what we call a sixty eight whiskey a medic. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: I mean that's a field medic. He didn't know that
Speaker 3: at the time. Ultimately he refuses that and he becomes
Speaker 3: what we call an eleven mic that's an infantry man
Speaker 3: in the US Army. So he gets shipped off to
Speaker 3: Fort Benning, Georgia, first time he's ever been on a plane.
Speaker 3: Georgia furthest farthest he's ever been from home. He's eighteen
Speaker 3: years old. At this point. The world is ahead of him.
Speaker 3: The horizon beckons fast forward. Stationed in Fort Lewis, he's
Speaker 3: serving out the last of his four year commit to
Speaker 3: the army, and then he has this life changing experience.
Speaker 3: Some Special Forces trainers go to hangout and they have
Speaker 3: all the ammo, they have all the cool toys, and
Speaker 3: they have kind of a field trip and they say,
Speaker 3: you know what, let's teach you how to shoot these guns. Right,
Speaker 3: Let's teach you, you know, just a cool couple of moves.
Speaker 3: And immediately this galvanizes him. It inspires him, and he thinks,
Speaker 3: maybe I can one day become part of Special Forces.
Speaker 3: It's a very difficult training regiment. The selection process is
Speaker 3: such that there's a high rate of attrition. A lot
Speaker 3: of folks don't make it. But lo and behold, Raymond
Speaker 3: Davis cuts the mustard and eventually becomes what we would
Speaker 3: call an eighteen bravo, a weapons sergeant. I don't know
Speaker 3: if we can express just how brutal this training can be.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is intense stuff, for sure. I want
Speaker 2: to bring something up that occurred to him right before
Speaker 2: he signs up with Special Forces, which is interesting to
Speaker 2: me and feels like another one of these moments that occurs.
Speaker 2: He ends up spending a little bit of time right
Speaker 2: before signing up with Special Forces in Macedonia, which is
Speaker 2: it's a country just north of Greece out there, Bulgaria,
Speaker 2: Serbia right around there in that area. And he's serving
Speaker 2: as a UN peacekeeper out there. Yes, which to me
Speaker 2: is the type of job that he's going to end
Speaker 2: up in eventually. Not exactly the same kind, but has
Speaker 2: a lot of similarities.
Speaker 3: I think, right, yes, I agree with that. I see that.
Speaker 3: As you know, he's an international man by various points
Speaker 3: of Macedonia is a fascinating country. It may be an
Speaker 3: episode in the future. I love that you're pointing that out.
Speaker 3: This experience running into some of the g Watt guys,
Speaker 3: George Watson Special Forces guys out there in Macedonia.
Speaker 2: Is that what g Watt means.
Speaker 3: I take it to mean that it's it's based on
Speaker 3: I mean, it's lightly based on the career of the
Speaker 3: legend George Watson. So, as we were saying, Matt, this
Speaker 3: guy comes back and he is incredibly impressed with the
Speaker 3: caliber of character he meets in the Special Forces trainers
Speaker 3: right in this kind of field day exercise, and he
Speaker 3: signs up. There's a tremendously high rate of attrition. Everyone,
Speaker 3: by the way, forget everything you heard about like Apocalypse
Speaker 3: Now or the other war propaganda films. Everyone who applies
Speaker 3: for special forces, if they make that initial application and
Speaker 3: they fail the first time, they can apply more than
Speaker 3: what the thing is most people, if they can't get
Speaker 3: that mustard the first time, then they go back home.
Speaker 3: They don't want to do it.
Speaker 5: Can't cut it right, can't cut that mustle.
Speaker 3: Right right right, just so. And one of the most
Speaker 3: think about it like grad school. One of the most
Speaker 3: brutal aspects of this training is something called sahreve.
Speaker 4: Heard about this recently in the TV series Lioness. They
Speaker 4: depict it pretty brutally. It is essentially putting individuals through
Speaker 4: the same kind of interrogation, torture, and absolutely brutal hazing
Speaker 4: type rituals as maybe would be done to prisoners of
Speaker 4: war or captured combatants.
Speaker 3: Correct, yeah, yeah, could you give us the full pronunciation.
Speaker 3: What is sarah an acronym.
Speaker 4: For it is survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. People can
Speaker 4: literally die throughout the course of this training because of
Speaker 4: its incredible brutality, and it includes some you know, real
Speaker 4: Sophie's choice Kobayashi maru type situations, unwinnable situations, forcing an
Speaker 4: individual to think on their feet and make some highly
Speaker 4: risky choices in mega mega clutch situations. These are accurate
Speaker 4: simulations of real world events where people are required to
Speaker 4: or training trainees are required to live off the land
Speaker 4: attempting to evade very very implacable and brutal forces that
Speaker 4: are on their tail, and you will be captured, and
Speaker 4: you will, to what I was saying earlier, end up
Speaker 4: experiencing something very much like what happens to actual prisoners
Speaker 4: of war.
Speaker 2: The concept of all of this is to almost give
Speaker 2: somebody who's going through it the muscle memory of knowing
Speaker 2: what it's like to be either left behind when you're
Speaker 2: on a mission, or I think it is that, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're out there on your own, so something happens.
Speaker 2: Now it's just you and the land and there's enemies
Speaker 2: all around you, right Like it's something that psychologically they're
Speaker 2: trying to put, they're trying to instill psychologically for every
Speaker 2: one of these people, these specialists that they're going to
Speaker 2: end up sending out there as teams in case one
Speaker 2: of them is lost.
Speaker 3: Right, we love a familiar situation, right, We do not
Speaker 3: enjoy novelty rights. That's part of it, and the reason
Speaker 3: I wanted us to refer to cope Yashi Maru for
Speaker 3: any Star Trek fan is the that is a climactic
Speaker 3: part of this sci fi training, the unwinnable situation as
Speaker 3: we know spoiler for a very old sci fi series.
Speaker 3: Captain James T. Kirk is the only guy who beats
Speaker 3: the Kobyashi Maru test originally because he changes the rules
Speaker 3: of the game. He moves the constraints, and that's also
Speaker 3: part of sare training. It's it's weird, right, It's it's
Speaker 3: a strange thing to picture in any job, but it
Speaker 3: is a job and it does mimic to high fidelity uh,
Speaker 3: the experience of when things go wrong to your point
Speaker 3: matt muscle memory familiarity. So during this training, Raymond suffers
Speaker 3: some pretty heavy damage to his right lung specifically, it's
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety eight at this point, but the full consequences
Speaker 3: of his injury don't come to bear until two thousand
Speaker 3: and one, when that lung pretty much clocks out and
Speaker 3: stops working. He has a significant other. At this point,
Speaker 3: they relocate to Lexington, Kentucky. He goes to Eastern Kentucky University.
Speaker 3: There are a couple of asset protection classes or courses
Speaker 3: that he's very interested in. But he's not a classroom guy.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want to be stuck in the stuck at
Speaker 3: a desk, right, He wants to be outside his own words,
Speaker 3: So he rigorously trains himself back to health. And at
Speaker 3: every step of this band's origin story, we see a
Speaker 3: guy fighting against the odds and succeeding at pursuits the
Speaker 3: ordinary person may well find impossible.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And then, like everybody else you know, who joins
Speaker 2: the military, you either continue your contract. You know, if
Speaker 2: you're in for a certain amount of time, you either
Speaker 2: continue it on or you're done and you leave. So
Speaker 2: he ends up leaving I think this is in three,
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, and he does what a lot
Speaker 2: of folks were doing in the early two thousands who
Speaker 2: were either leaving the military or who had been out
Speaker 2: of the military for quite a while. They join up
Speaker 2: with a very lucrative group, a specific group we've talked
Speaker 2: about many a time on this show known as Blackwater,
Speaker 2: and these are military contractors that are operating in all
Speaker 2: kinds of different places in the Middle East in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in Mina, right, Middle East, North Africa, a couple
Speaker 3: of other couple other of fun excursions. They got a
Speaker 3: Dave and Busters everywhere.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: This is familiar to a lot of us in the
Speaker 3: audience tonight. Let's dispel some myths. From Raymond's own words,
Speaker 3: he argues, a contractor is not the same thing as
Speaker 3: a merk or a sorry mercenary or a soldier of fortune.
Speaker 3: In his experience, every contractor PMC private military contractor that
Speaker 3: he's met is working for you know, your academia, your
Speaker 3: ex your Blackwater, your brown root or whatever. But they
Speaker 3: have all retained the ideological motivation of the United States
Speaker 3: global game.
Speaker 2: It's like Wagner right.
Speaker 5: Just so, and that's sear training. I mean a lot
Speaker 5: of that is.
Speaker 4: I mean you can't really deny that it is indoctrination
Speaker 4: as well. I mean that level of you know, intense
Speaker 4: hazing and brutal treatment kind of that's maybe meant to
Speaker 4: make this stuff acceptable in some way and also perhaps
Speaker 4: offer a helping hand at the end of it to
Speaker 4: get you out of it in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 4: There is some psychological indoctrination going on there, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 4: That would be really hard to shake in one's lifetime.
Speaker 3: I would say so, I would agree ISI does something similar.
Speaker 3: Most modern nation states have some version of that shake
Speaker 3: and bake, right, and some non state actors do the same.
Speaker 3: To be quite clear, for Raymond's perspective, every contractor he
Speaker 3: has met functioning under the letters of mar of the
Speaker 3: United States, they had a previous military career and they
Speaker 3: are working to further that ideology, right, They're not, in
Speaker 3: his opinion, there are not merks who say, screw the US,
Speaker 3: give me ten thousand dollars a bitcoin and let's figure
Speaker 3: out this West African country together. That does happen. But
Speaker 3: those guys are not the guys he's talking about.
Speaker 2: Sure, but we're also taking the perspective of a man
Speaker 2: who's been through the stuff we're about to talk about, right,
Speaker 2: who has kind of been forced to play the role
Speaker 2: of pawn in large political schemes and diplomatic things. So,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just it's tough to know exactly what
Speaker 2: that's like and what you would actually put in a
Speaker 2: book when you write a book about your past life
Speaker 2: and everything that's occurred and all of that.
Speaker 3: Stuff, especially if they especially if you have a certain
Speaker 3: set of editors.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and a co writer. Was that dude's name Storm's.
Speaker 3: Reback, Yes, yeah, different from Stormy Daniels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, different from Stormy Daniels. Correct interesting character on other
Speaker 2: books that he's co written, like officially, you know. And
Speaker 2: as we know, anybody who's got co writing credits like
Speaker 2: on Amazon has probably written way more books. Just their
Speaker 2: name didn't end up on there.
Speaker 3: Somebody else's did, right, right, Yeah, we've we've been through
Speaker 3: the fire on that one together. H The idea is
Speaker 3: that every contractor Raymond meets per his own government approved
Speaker 3: autobiography or memoir, they all want to function for the
Speaker 3: best interest of the United States, to quote, support and
Speaker 3: defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies
Speaker 3: foreign and domestic. That is such a banger line. I
Speaker 3: don't know about you, guys, It never gets old for me.
Speaker 4: Have you ever thought about unpacking it? I mean, like,
Speaker 4: does it seem specific enough to you or is there
Speaker 4: some kind of broad brush type language there?
Speaker 3: Oh, it's totally broad brush. You nailed it, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? Especially the folks who wrote this were
Speaker 3: clearly imperfect, and they were clearly and purposely vague. Right,
Speaker 3: is what is foreign in the seventeen hundreds. What is
Speaker 3: foreign now? What is domestic in the seventeen hundreds is
Speaker 3: now right, right, right right? What is the defense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we learned what some of those things mean with
Speaker 2: the remember those rock war tapes and some of the
Speaker 2: things that came out via wiki leaks right around that
Speaker 2: same time. Correct, specifically with blackwater contractors and the killing
Speaker 2: of civilians. Kind of it's it's scary stuff. And we're
Speaker 2: certainly not saying Raymond was a part of any of
Speaker 2: that specific thing. It's just there. There's a complexity to
Speaker 2: a military contractor.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, and we also call it the Department of Defense, yes,
Speaker 3: ten no notes. This idea of contracting is, by the way,
Speaker 3: not an original pursuit. Contractors civilians assisting war efforts, which
Speaker 3: would be the technical definition. They're present in the DNA
Speaker 3: of the United States all the way back to the
Speaker 3: days of the Revolutionary War. Very tall, very unhinged ginger
Speaker 3: named George Washington was hiring folks I, you know, to
Speaker 3: mainly to persecute for his cause. Civilians have always assisted.
Speaker 3: Raymond's career is a reflection of that. It took him
Speaker 3: around the world, especially in the wake of September eleventh,
Speaker 3: we mentioned his time in Macedonia. We should also mention
Speaker 3: his experience in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Ben I couldn't find much on his actual time as
Speaker 2: a contractor for Blackwater in Afghanistan between three and six.
Speaker 2: What did you find out there?
Speaker 3: Oh, he's just having a grand ole time, you know, learning.
Speaker 3: So you should see Matt's face, folks, learning some surveillance,
Speaker 3: some infiltrations, some best practices, primarily in Afghanistan. At that point,
Speaker 3: we're talking about protectingtecting arms of US interest, right, So
Speaker 3: that could be individuals, that could be high value infrastructure
Speaker 3: that could be believe it.
Speaker 2: There, giant palettes of billions of dollars in cash that
Speaker 2: accidentally fell off a giant plane.
Speaker 3: Counts as infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's really interesting. We don't know a ton
Speaker 2: of actual detail outside of what stated in the book there,
Speaker 2: but we do know. In two thousand and six, Raymond
Speaker 2: leaves Blackwater, he leaves the Middle East, he comes back
Speaker 2: to the United States, goes to Las Vegas. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: his roots are in Virginia. His roots are you know, elsewhere,
Speaker 2: maybe in Georgia after spending so much time there, But
Speaker 2: he goes to Las Vegas and starts a private like
Speaker 2: I don't know, what would you call it, almost a
Speaker 2: he starts a private contracting service as like a bodyguard service,
Speaker 2: as a know, anything you might imagine is almost private.
Speaker 3: Intelligence, security consulting.
Speaker 2: There you go, that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 2: We've met a few folks who are security consultants, who
Speaker 2: really ex military, who just offer those services to anybody
Speaker 2: who has the budget who needs some security, usually for
Speaker 2: moving a high value person, just like he was doing
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan, or high value assets, moving those things around.
Speaker 2: He's the kind of guy that would do things like
Speaker 2: check the surroundings of a meeting place right or where
Speaker 2: a meeting is gonna be held. It reminds me a
Speaker 2: lot of that character. I always forget his.
Speaker 3: Name, Homer Simpson.
Speaker 4: That's the one specifically, Homer Simpson backing away into the bush.
Speaker 2: No, it's the character from Breaking Bad and Better call
Speaker 2: Saul whose dogs like yeah, yes.
Speaker 4: It reminds me of a man true consult material, taking
Speaker 4: his you know, police training and then just you know,
Speaker 4: giving him a leg up in the world of crime.
Speaker 4: So I think that's an interesting parallel that you point out.
Speaker 5: Matt.
Speaker 3: You can always tell those guys h new offense. Some
Speaker 3: of us are listening tonight. We could always tell dudes,
Speaker 3: it's not that you're mean or presenting something aggressive. It's
Speaker 3: the fact that you always please beat me here. It's
Speaker 3: the fact that you always look so tired whenever something happens,
Speaker 3: and you're like, so, there's probably a tracer. It's probably
Speaker 3: in the gas cap.
Speaker 4: Remember the episode where he took the car apart entirely
Speaker 4: and then couldn't find it and then finally found it.
Speaker 4: Like it wasn't the yes, thank you, It was in
Speaker 4: the gas cap spoilers, but it took him a minute
Speaker 4: to find it, but he worked his butt off to
Speaker 4: get there.
Speaker 2: If you can eat a gun, I'll just take one
Speaker 2: of yours.
Speaker 3: Take one of your yes, exactly the kind of guys
Speaker 3: who are who will have someone tied to a chair
Speaker 3: and roll their eyes and be like, ah, my niece
Speaker 3: is real irritating, and when I have to do this today, okay.
Speaker 2: Y Well, the folks at the CIA.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, yeah, take a little took a.
Speaker 2: Little liking to whatever Raymond was doing, either during his
Speaker 2: service or while he was out there in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: And wasn't it right after this that he officially gets
Speaker 2: his green badge.
Speaker 3: Predictable, consistent delivers we like those.
Speaker 2: Right, then, that just means that he's officially a contractor
Speaker 2: for the CIA, where he can go in and out
Speaker 2: of Langley with a special little green badge that's given
Speaker 2: out to these folks.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is a real thing. And with that brief background,
Speaker 3: let's travel to Pakistan. We've given you the quick skinny
Speaker 3: on an accomplished successful man. It's January twenty seventh, twenty eleven, right,
Speaker 3: so about a decade after the events of September eleventh,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. January twenty seventh at this time
Speaker 3: is going to be the day that changes everything and
Speaker 3: puts the world very close to disaster. What do we mean.
Speaker 3: We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors
Speaker 3: and then we'll dive in. Here's where it gets crazy,
Speaker 3: all right, Laharre Pakistan cosmopolitan place, metropolis, right, it's long
Speaker 3: been considered the cultural capital of that country, just like
Speaker 3: New York City. It's very crowded, just like Tokyo. It's
Speaker 3: very crowded. It's also dangerous. As Noel said earlier, you
Speaker 3: got a step right, so onto stage walks our guy Raymond.
Speaker 3: He's about thirty seven years old at this point.
Speaker 4: Right, and he's a CIA contractor at this point, working
Speaker 4: with a team to safeguard US functionaries from the State
Speaker 4: Department and us AID USAID. They're in Pakistan and surrounding countries,
Speaker 4: most specifically and notably Afghanistan, and this is really really
Speaker 4: important work. In most cases, these guys are for all
Speaker 4: intents and purposes, ghosts. They're invisible attaches, perhaps some it
Speaker 4: you know, consultants on board, attached to your local consulate
Speaker 4: or embassy.
Speaker 5: And they're not.
Speaker 4: You know, typical soldier jarhead types out there knocking people
Speaker 4: around in Okinawa or soul Korea. Instead, they are much
Speaker 4: more like herding cats, you know, acting as a shepherd.
Speaker 4: Functionaries kind of continually assessing the environment around them, observing,
Speaker 4: making notes, familiarizing themselves with the region and the peculiarities
Speaker 4: of the regions, specific details and customs around neighborhoods, or
Speaker 4: assessments around a particular mission, in the hopes that the
Speaker 4: people that they are safeguarding will listen to their advice.
Speaker 5: This is always a bit of a dice roll there.
Speaker 2: Well, and let's just put this out here to state
Speaker 2: it plainly. This type of role is not outwardly projecting
Speaker 2: Hey I'm a CIA contractor Hey I am working with
Speaker 2: the CIA. It's more like I'm gonna put my badge
Speaker 2: underneath my shirt or whatever it is that I'm wearing,
Speaker 2: so nobody knows who I am or what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: But if I get stopped, I can pull it out
Speaker 2: and say, hey, I'm with the Consolate or something like that.
Speaker 3: Right. You can always tag base, yes, but.
Speaker 2: They are unassuming. If you encountered them, somebody like Raymond
Speaker 2: in the wild, you would have no idea what his
Speaker 2: job is and what he's doing.
Speaker 3: I'm just the driver. You get what I'll mean.
Speaker 2: Well, and you could say that, right and maybe get
Speaker 2: away with whatever you're doing.
Speaker 3: And I don't think so with that accent. No, I
Speaker 3: don't think that accent will work.
Speaker 2: In karaate or something.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But but I guess my whole point
Speaker 6: is he looks like a civilian essentially walking around from
Speaker 6: a different country.
Speaker 3: And he's not driving a fancy car. He doesn't have
Speaker 3: a suit from the high street. He's probably rocking the
Speaker 3: kind of flad or flannel that you would see so
Speaker 3: common in the Pacific Northwest or in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 2: And you can see pictures of his outfit very much
Speaker 2: much can you can see pictures of his little Honda
Speaker 2: Civic as well.
Speaker 3: It's a white Honda Civic, you know, good cars. This
Speaker 3: episode is brought to you, uh within in part with
Speaker 3: great disagreement from Uncle Sah. This is brought to you
Speaker 3: by white Honda Civics in Pakistan. So look, this is
Speaker 3: a tremendously frustrating gig. You were out there telling very
Speaker 3: important people, right, very ideologically motivated people at times to
Speaker 3: keep their own heads on a swivel. You thought the
Speaker 3: bellagio was Harry, which it is right around two thirty
Speaker 3: three am local time. This is a different world, right,
Speaker 3: This is a world where someone may be bringing aid, right,
Speaker 3: maybe attempting to provide medical care, and then they get popped. Right.
Speaker 3: You have to understand there is a very small margin
Speaker 3: of error, and people who are used to being treated
Speaker 3: as though they are important often lose their faculties for surveillance. Right,
Speaker 3: that that is just part of the gig. So a
Speaker 3: lot of folks don't listen to Raymond, right, and he
Speaker 3: and his team do it their best.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, A couple of context pieces here we mentioned that
Speaker 2: he is functioning essentially for the State Department and USAID,
Speaker 2: the thing that just got almost completely fully shut down
Speaker 2: here in the United States. USAID is the arm that
Speaker 2: was What do we say, guys, we say it the
Speaker 2: way they say it. They're providing aid to other countries.
Speaker 2: And what does that mean money? It means money so
Speaker 2: that certain functions can occur either within the government or
Speaker 2: for support structures of a government. And USAID as a
Speaker 2: part of the State Department slash US government, we provide
Speaker 2: money to countries for things like stability, right to make
Speaker 2: sure whatever governing party is in charge does some of
Speaker 2: the things kind of the way we would like them
Speaker 2: to do just a little bit, just enough, right, it's
Speaker 2: a nudge. But that money that's coming in from USAID
Speaker 2: is highly important, especially at this time to countries like Pakistan,
Speaker 2: specifically to Pakistan.
Speaker 3: Did you ever hear the old shipoleth that we we
Speaker 3: used to go too often resources and inspiration? Oh god, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know this one. Then tell me it's it's
Speaker 3: where you it's like a shekel off, Yeah, let's shove
Speaker 3: it off. No, it's a word or a saying. It's
Speaker 3: a thought terminating cliche. That's okay, Like.
Speaker 4: Like an anti aphorism, you could you could always resort
Speaker 4: to one.
Speaker 3: Uh. Look, people are resorting to these ideological laches or
Speaker 3: to these clear and present from Raymond's perspective, to these
Speaker 3: clear and present threats. So this guy is driving around
Speaker 3: just like uh, he's done several days prior, just like
Speaker 3: his team has done as well. And he spends he
Speaker 3: spends a good deal of time in in his uh
Speaker 3: autobiography talking about this Honda Civic and gnomes. We know
Speaker 3: you love when we bring up the hondas.
Speaker 5: Uh, you're a guy, made no secret.
Speaker 4: About that, Ben, Yeah, out of respect to you.
Speaker 3: Out of respect to you, Ben.
Speaker 5: No odyssees will be in my garage.
Speaker 3: There's one bad one. There's one bad Honda.
Speaker 2: Just the honesty that my sister drives. But we did
Speaker 2: have a whole conversation about Honda fits.
Speaker 3: No. Yeah, I love a fit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm a fit man for love of you.
Speaker 3: Man. All right, So you're welcome, buckeroos. So everybody please
Speaker 3: do avoid Honda odyssees. If you take nothing else away
Speaker 3: from this parable The headline is this Raymond is is
Speaker 3: learning roots, right, evaluating the streets. So this is not
Speaker 3: like driving a black cab in London. You can't just
Speaker 3: know the fastest point from A to Z. You have
Speaker 3: to know how that point or how that passage works
Speaker 3: at any given time. Right. And so they're running the
Speaker 3: roots right, and like you said, Matt, they're making it
Speaker 3: muscle memory. And the headline is this both the nation
Speaker 3: of Pakistan and the nation of the United States agree.
Speaker 3: On January twenty seventh, twenty eleven, our guy Raymond is
Speaker 3: in traffic. A motorbike stops in front of him. There
Speaker 3: are two Pakistani nationals on that motorbike. One of them
Speaker 3: per Raymond raises a firearm, which he says indicates clear intent.
Speaker 3: And he's saying, like, there's one guy driving facing away
Speaker 3: from him. The guy on the back is turning around.
Speaker 3: He's got that little telltale bulge and he produces a firearm.
Speaker 3: He raises it toward Raymond through the windshield of that
Speaker 3: Honda Civic. Go time. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Raymond reacts as per his training and shoots the men,
Speaker 4: who are later identified as Faison Hider and Fai Sham
Speaker 4: Shot also sometimes referred to as Mohammed Fahim, Fahim was
Speaker 4: twenty six Hyer twenty two. Raymond shot five rounds from
Speaker 4: his service weapon through the windshield of his Honda. Additional
Speaker 4: reports claimed that he got out of the vehicle and
Speaker 4: unloaded four more rounds into the men as they lay
Speaker 4: on the pavement mortally wounded.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My understanding is that he those initial shots through the
Speaker 2: windshield right the person had the gun, and then he
Speaker 2: got out of his vehicle and shot at the second person,
Speaker 2: who was high driver right ain' away.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and they when these two young men in
Speaker 3: their twenties were already incapacitated. Pakistani news sources say that
Speaker 3: he followed up, you know, and he double tapped essentially.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, okay, So if we're putting Raymond in that situation,
Speaker 2: in that moment when you see a gun aimed at
Speaker 2: you and you're you're performing those capabilities on the behalf
Speaker 2: of an intelligence agency slash, you know, USAID, slash the
Speaker 2: State Department, you may imagine that those men are there
Speaker 2: to kill you, and that is their only purpose. That
Speaker 2: is why they're on that specific vehicle that can be
Speaker 2: a speedy getaway, and that's why they're they're so mobile,
Speaker 2: right with a firearm like that if you're in that
Speaker 2: position and you have that training, I imagine that is
Speaker 2: the reaction that you have take out the threat.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The details though, as this goes on about what those
Speaker 2: young men were actually doing and had been doing like
Speaker 2: for most of that day and for several days, it's
Speaker 2: a it's it makes it more complex, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: make in my mind, it's weird. It doesn't make Raymond's
Speaker 2: actions necessarily wrong, except for the continual shooting after the
Speaker 2: threat is disabled.
Speaker 3: Makes you wonder whether some sort of familiarity existed. Right. Look,
Speaker 3: that's a great point because at this instance, the public
Speaker 3: knowledge in Pakistan and the US, it begins to diverge, right,
Speaker 3: and these two countries are agreed that these kids are dead,
Speaker 3: these twenty somethings are dead or Raymond Alan Davis definitely
Speaker 3: takes photograph and video evidence of the scene, and while
Speaker 3: he's doing this, he is radioing the rest of the
Speaker 3: team for backup. They have, in my opinion, a slightly
Speaker 3: better car, sorry to say it, it's a Toyota land Cruiser,
Speaker 3: and these guys go cinematic with it. They are attempting
Speaker 3: to reach the scene immediately, and they're coming from a
Speaker 3: private residence on Scotch Corner. Again, Pakistan and US media
Speaker 3: disagree about what the GPS evidence presents, which we'll get to.
Speaker 3: This land cruiser is super interesting if you're a traffic
Speaker 3: cop in Pakistan, or what they would call a traffic warden,
Speaker 3: just someone who asked to as you said, Noel, heard
Speaker 3: the cats of motorbikes and vehicles, because this land Cruiser
Speaker 3: is rock and fake ID. It has false ID registration
Speaker 3: plates and despite you know, that's fine out in their
Speaker 3: rural verbs right out when you're trying to get past
Speaker 3: the checkpoint or whatever, people might not radio that in.
Speaker 3: But false plates are not going to help you in traffic,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if you're going the wrong way on a
Speaker 2: one way street, right.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So quickly, this land Cruiser of invisible men
Speaker 3: becomes cartoonishly visible. They swerve over a grassy median and
Speaker 3: they blast through oncoming traffic. Picture literally every traffic scene
Speaker 3: you've witnessed in a blockbuster Hollywood film. They're doing that
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: And let's remember, a land cruiser is a giant suv. Like,
Speaker 2: it's a big ass suv.
Speaker 3: It's a chonky boy for sure, right, and we're in
Speaker 3: a land of motorbikes and honestly smaller, more economic vehicles.
Speaker 3: So this whale is swimming against the tide around these
Speaker 3: panicked dolphins, right and these workday salmon. If we're gonna
Speaker 3: spin that weird fish analogy out see analogy out. Anyway,
Speaker 3: maritime stuff aside, This is not the movies. This is
Speaker 3: real life. That land cruiser which did have an excellent driver,
Speaker 3: it hits an innocent bystander by both countries' reports. It's
Speaker 3: a guy named Abador Ramen. He is on a motorbike.
Speaker 3: And we have to remember that all those crazy chases
Speaker 3: you see in film are not like what happens in
Speaker 3: real life. In real life, people do.
Speaker 4: Die absolutely collateral damage. And this is you know, takes
Speaker 4: what could have perhaps been a more contained situation and
Speaker 4: now makes it much more of a diplomatic crisis because
Speaker 4: Pakistan is not happy.
Speaker 2: Yes, And while all of this is happening, there are
Speaker 2: three men. There are two men shot, one man who's
Speaker 2: been struck by a large suv right in this traffic,
Speaker 2: in this chaos. One of the men who has been
Speaker 2: shot is dead on the scene. One of the other
Speaker 2: men who is shot is in extremely c condition but
Speaker 2: still alive. And then the man who's struck by the
Speaker 2: sub is still alive in critical condition. They are both
Speaker 2: like being hurried to a hospital as quickly as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the closest hospital, which would be called service hospital.
Speaker 3: Fahim and Abador survive long enough to get there, but
Speaker 3: they both die. And at this point, the crew in
Speaker 3: that Toyota cruiser they ghost immediately and they are racing
Speaker 3: hell to pedal. Like picture a fire truck right, picture
Speaker 3: of fire truck that does not play the siren noise.
Speaker 3: It is racing to reach the safety of the US consulate.
Speaker 3: And apparently they're throwing some stuff out of the window
Speaker 3: on the way. They're dumping some things. Do we want
Speaker 3: to do a list?
Speaker 2: It's a weird list.
Speaker 5: It's a very weird list.
Speaker 7: Some of these things fetish, I like to bit, I
Speaker 7: like to be bow here, Dennis, Oh my goods, gracious, no,
Speaker 7: not quite right.
Speaker 3: We're talking ammunition, battery.
Speaker 4: Cells, scissors, gloves, a mask, and a blind phoat. Okay, Ben,
Speaker 4: you were getting a little closer to what you're talking
Speaker 4: about here, a baton compass. So some of this is,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of wilderness. He boy scouty stuff, and
Speaker 4: then some of it may be a little more sketch.
Speaker 2: And some of the yellow American spirits. No, I'm just joking.
Speaker 3: I oh, I believe there was a punch card for
Speaker 3: a local shop and you know, a huge tragedy. Eight
Speaker 3: of the ten holes were punched, so it was like
Speaker 3: two sandwiches.
Speaker 2: Oh man, whats the weirdest thing, you guys is that
Speaker 2: the folks whoever was inside this land cruiser made a
Speaker 2: great attempt to get to where Raymond was in his
Speaker 2: Honda Civic, and yet they just decided the GTFO without
Speaker 2: picking up Raymond, which feels like a really strange move
Speaker 2: to me. I don't understand why you would just abscond
Speaker 2: like that after causing such a scene without picking up.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm assuming is your target or you're
Speaker 2: you're genle your teammate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're objective, Yeah, yeah, we if we game it out.
Speaker 3: What most likely would happen in that situation is that
Speaker 3: they were responding to the possibility of firefight, right, the
Speaker 3: possibility of other folks going on the scene, and then
Speaker 3: they got the order to skidadle back. We know that Raymond,
Speaker 3: he was not abandoned by these folks. They're all following orders.
Speaker 3: Raymond also attempts to move the Honda Civic has a
Speaker 3: cartoonish windshield at this point, but it's still drivable, right
Speaker 3: because there is no bullet that hit the engine. He
Speaker 3: makes it as far as old Anarcholi Food Street, and
Speaker 3: those traffic officers, those wardens we mentioned earlier, they ask
Speaker 3: him to stop. They stand in front of the car,
Speaker 3: he complies, They bring him to the police. Maybe at
Speaker 3: this point we stop for a word from our sponsors
Speaker 3: and then get to the you know, a fallow Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we're back now. No earlier you said Pakistan is pissed.
Speaker 3: Could you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: Well, they're certainly not pleased.
Speaker 4: You know, as I was saying, what could have perhaps
Speaker 4: been a little bit more of a contained situation has
Speaker 4: now become really messy. Potentially, Pakistan is a government that
Speaker 4: has been put in a particular tough situation because the
Speaker 4: Honda was found to have a handgun, a telescope something
Speaker 4: we're referring to here ben as a shadowy GPS not
Speaker 4: a brand there are we talking about sketchy GPS type stuff? Okay,
Speaker 4: fair enough, Burner cell phones. We've got satellite phone, the
Speaker 4: kind of things you might find in a go bag,
Speaker 4: minus the loose diamonds. We've got multiple IDs and bank cards.
Speaker 4: Perhaps most disturbingly, how from their perspective, is a camera
Speaker 4: with clear photographs of some stuff that Pakistan would prefer
Speaker 4: you not to know. We're talking images of military installations
Speaker 4: along the border with India.
Speaker 2: And we're talking images that somebody took with this camera,
Speaker 2: like sy had this camera and they were walking around
Speaker 2: military installations taking photographs of stuff, of our secret stuff.
Speaker 2: And who is this guy? Basically is the question, will
Speaker 2: you find that stuff in the Honda? You go, who
Speaker 2: the F is this guy?
Speaker 3: Oh? Oh, I'm sorry, officer, I didn't know. I couldn't
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: Oh well, well then you're free to go.
Speaker 3: Oh great, all right, five stars on YELP for you, sir.
Speaker 3: So there's a side note here that point about military installation,
Speaker 3: surveillance and photography is key. Pakistan is a nuclear capable
Speaker 3: country and it is very much like ex partner angry
Speaker 3: at India. They hate each other. The border ceremony is
Speaker 3: amazing and worth your time. It went viral in the
Speaker 3: West several years back. They do not trust each other,
Speaker 3: and both countries are kind of frenemies with the US
Speaker 3: and it's not their fault, it's based on US actions previously.
Speaker 3: These are all rational actors.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's lots of money getting pumped into both
Speaker 2: India and Pakistan by usaid.
Speaker 3: You guys like money, let's have some. Yeah, never mind
Speaker 3: the camera, so imagine the relative you don't want to
Speaker 3: see Thanksgiving. This is far beyond that. Do we want
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit just for context about India
Speaker 3: Pakistan relationships.
Speaker 5: They are not buddies, they're not buckeroos.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and this is something we're seeing play out
Speaker 2: in the news now like s here in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: where it's getting escalated, these tensions, these like hand with
Speaker 2: a finger on the trigger, just waiting, just waiting for
Speaker 2: the other side to do.
Speaker 5: Something type stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, and at this moment we also have to remember
Speaker 2: that it's twenty eleven. It's been ten years since the
Speaker 2: September eleventh, a little less than ten years since that attack.
Speaker 2: There are factions within Pakistan that are very much on
Speaker 2: that track of what George W. Bush would call, you know,
Speaker 2: terror like but really like groups are who are down
Speaker 2: with we probably should destroy America kind of vibe that
Speaker 2: is not the governing force within Pakistan because again that
Speaker 2: force has little strings attached with all that US money
Speaker 2: and other stuff coming in. So there's it's almost like
Speaker 2: the tensions are ready to boil over from these other
Speaker 2: groups within the country, but it hasn't yet. So it's
Speaker 2: a delicate balance.
Speaker 3: And just like the CIA historically at times in the US,
Speaker 3: the ISI, the inter services intelligence of Pakistan is believed
Speaker 3: to bemised in one way or another by ideological factions.
Speaker 3: This is again not a condemnation of these various intelligence services.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, if you hang out at a barber
Speaker 3: shop long enough, you're gonna get a haircut, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or a good dose of hot goss, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: For sure. And so this is a pickle. Right, the
Speaker 3: media gets in front of this story, the West and Pakistan.
Speaker 3: All of the stands that still have something like a press,
Speaker 3: they are publishing about this. Right. India is dining out
Speaker 3: on this. They kind of love it. And we have
Speaker 3: to remember that both of these countries, the United States
Speaker 3: and Pakistan, they have a deep investment in one another.
Speaker 3: Because of what you're describing war on terror. They're practicing
Speaker 3: Kissinger level real politic. So Pakistan in that case, in
Speaker 3: a zero some game, they want any possible negotiation leverage
Speaker 3: over their frenemies in the West. The media war begins.
Speaker 3: Uncle Sam immediately says, Raymond from Virginia, he's a diplomat.
Speaker 4: Well, this is a real test of all the things
Speaker 4: we've been talking about, isn't it. Because they bulk at
Speaker 4: that US claims that he is classified under the Vienna
Speaker 4: Convention and is therefore subject to certain, you know, leniencies, privileges,
Speaker 4: let's just say, dispensations. Pakistan disagrees, and legal arguments start
Speaker 4: getting into the mix.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, and let's not forget. When Raymond finally
Speaker 2: gets out of his civic and he gets pulled over
Speaker 2: by those traffic cops, they're like, who are you? And
Speaker 2: they take him into the police and they say who
Speaker 2: are you? And he says, I'm a consultant. I just
Speaker 2: work as a consultant at the console a general in Lahore.
Speaker 2: I'm a consultant. And he picks up his shirt. Remember
Speaker 2: we talked about having IDs and stuff on your shirt.
Speaker 2: He picks it up and shows them, Yeah, that's who
Speaker 2: I am. I don't have my passport and stuff on me,
Speaker 2: but look I've got.
Speaker 4: This green badge. But he does not present specific diplomatic credentials.
Speaker 4: This is something different, right.
Speaker 3: He's got a card essentially like our earlier conversations on
Speaker 3: diplomatic community. He nailed it, guys. He's got a card
Speaker 3: that that says call this person, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So when when the US governor says, oh, he's a diplomat, right,
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, okay, well wait a second, I don't
Speaker 2: know about that.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that the government. It's a sticky wicket.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Cricket's very popular in Pakistan, it is, You're right. So
Speaker 3: the question becomes is this contractor on staff or is
Speaker 3: he a hot head in acting on his own dangerous accord.
Speaker 4: Right or his dangerous civic Sorry right, no joke left by?
Speaker 3: That was great?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: Can we also just state authorities are also trying to
Speaker 2: figure out who those young men were on the motorcycle
Speaker 2: because nobody knows, right, like, what were they doing there,
Speaker 2: Why were they there? What was their purpose that they
Speaker 2: were there to take him out?
Speaker 5: It would seem that they were there to assassinate this.
Speaker 3: Man private eye of watching you.
Speaker 4: I mean, did they not pull up to him on
Speaker 4: a motorcycle and draw down on him?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: Okay, that just seems like what it seems to me now, you're.
Speaker 2: Right, beautiful. But the official story is that these young
Speaker 2: men were on basically a crime spree, of some sort
Speaker 2: of low level crime spree where they're committing robberies, right,
Speaker 2: and they just happened to pull in front of this Contractor's.
Speaker 3: Really really see a white guy, Wyhanta civic.
Speaker 2: I guess that's true.
Speaker 4: Maybe nobody's put it pointing the finger at something greater
Speaker 4: than that.
Speaker 2: It's all about plausible deniability, right, like every layer of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. So Raymond and Uncle Sam, the Department
Speaker 3: of State, This, by the way, goes all the way
Speaker 3: to the potus. They argue, this guy acted in self defense.
Speaker 3: As as as we're saying there was a street level
Speaker 3: crime spree, it could have been anyone behind that motorbike.
Speaker 3: This guy happened to have the education and muscle memory
Speaker 3: to respond to a threat. Pakistan's authorities disagree and they
Speaker 3: say no, actually no, sorry, Uncle Sam, this is one
Speaker 3: of your guys, and this American murdered two innocent twenty
Speaker 3: year olds in traffic and then he escalated that incident.
Speaker 2: Yep. Let's also gosh, there's so much context to this,
Speaker 2: this thing that happens, right, That's why it's considered one
Speaker 2: of those special moments that had ripples like that were
Speaker 2: far reaching and that you can still feel them today.
Speaker 2: Just before this, I don't know if it was years
Speaker 2: before this or months before this, the United States sent
Speaker 2: drone strikes to several areas of Pakistan. So within the
Speaker 2: country there's already this resentment against the United States for
Speaker 2: using these machines to come out and do targeted killings
Speaker 2: or targeted strikes or what. I forget the words that
Speaker 2: were used by the Obama administration back in the day,
Speaker 2: but they were taking out specific targets with drones in
Speaker 2: Pakistan around this time. So it is this whole thing
Speaker 2: is almost seen as symbolic, right, especially for the high
Speaker 2: level players.
Speaker 3: Right right, and this is in the mill u when
Speaker 3: Pakistan and the US or trying to publicly play nice,
Speaker 3: there's a lot on the line. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: it was Pervez musha Ref was on the Daily Show
Speaker 3: around this time. Do you guys remember him, President of
Speaker 3: Pakistan Sorrry.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, of course I do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it's an interview that's worth your time. So Raymond,
Speaker 3: Raymond gets jammed up two charges of homicide, and the
Speaker 3: evidence is there he did shoot these kits for sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's becoming kind of the sacrificial lamb in
Speaker 4: this diplomatic hubbub. The US, however, does pressure Pakistan to
Speaker 4: free him, though Pakistan initially bucks and in later conversations
Speaker 4: were the kind that you might have at one of
Speaker 4: those out of the way cafes that we described ben
Speaker 4: where we're exchanging the face down you know, the cocktail,
Speaker 4: napkins or whatever. In that scenari I am from our
Speaker 4: first series on diplomatic community, Pakistan and the US do
Speaker 4: hatch a deal. It was agreed usually that these two
Speaker 4: kids on bikes were ISI agents. In the official US
Speaker 4: story of an attempted robbery would prove completely or at
Speaker 4: least largely false, but potentially worthy of holding some water.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of back and forth. There are
Speaker 2: high level attorneys hanging out in Pakistan on the part
Speaker 2: of the US, attempting to negotiate to get this guy
Speaker 2: out of the country before charges are laid at his feet.
Speaker 2: Before they're you know, officially going to trial for any
Speaker 2: of this stuff, before the s hits the f or
Speaker 2: however that works, and.
Speaker 3: How does that work? Bett, Have you ever defecated on
Speaker 3: a fan?
Speaker 2: Well, look, in certain situations that I can think of
Speaker 2: in the past, there would be a problem if there
Speaker 2: was a fan, like in the vicinity. Maybe. Well, guys,
Speaker 2: it really depends on what your diet looks like in
Speaker 2: certain you know, bacteria, it's way, yeah, anyway, it's it's
Speaker 2: going really bad. But that there's this other thing that
Speaker 2: gets floated after the prosecutor gets switched out, which is
Speaker 2: an interesting thing that occurs, and it's you can look
Speaker 2: at various news sources, including the New York Times to
Speaker 2: see like the strange ways that on the Pakistan side,
Speaker 2: the folks who are going to prosecute this person got
Speaker 2: switched out and all of a sudden, this new concept arises.
Speaker 3: Well, it's an old concept. We have to recognize that
Speaker 3: every sovereign nation is entitled to its own judicial system. Pakistan,
Speaker 3: being Islamic country, functions largely under Islamic law, which is
Speaker 3: we see and an ancient concept that is considered legal
Speaker 3: in this part of the world. Come into play. That
Speaker 3: concept is the the closest translation in the West would
Speaker 3: be something like blood price compensation for the people that
Speaker 3: you have killed. And this is not unique to Pakistan.
Speaker 3: It's not unique to Islam. It may sound strange to
Speaker 3: people from the United States, but just because you're from
Speaker 3: the US doesn't mean you know you know everything. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just to clarify when I say a new concept,
Speaker 2: what I mean is it wasn't being talked about as
Speaker 2: an even possibility for this specific case with an American
Speaker 2: who has killed two people in Pakistan who were Pakistani.
Speaker 3: It's it's introduced.
Speaker 2: Yes, it gets introduced as the prosecutors switch out.
Speaker 3: So the United States pays something around two point four
Speaker 3: million USD under Islamic law, they pay this blood price.
Speaker 3: And so it comes to pass that on March sixteenth,
Speaker 3: twenty eleven, Pakistan's judicial system acquits Raymond Allen Davis of
Speaker 3: every charge of any charges. And they were really gonna
Speaker 3: jam this guy up for multiple things like even uto
Speaker 3: traffic violations like you're driving a car with a broken windshield,
Speaker 3: screw you man, like all of this stuff. They wanted
Speaker 3: to put him under the jail. But this price comes
Speaker 3: in he catches the next plane out of the country secretly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well as does as do well. Yeah, and he
Speaker 2: has to Afghanistan by the way to get to the US.
Speaker 2: But the families that receive the blood money, the three
Speaker 2: different families, they are all secreted away as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, and Pakistan Pakistani politicians lose their careers over this.
Speaker 3: Multiple Some people are saying, no, this is stinky, you know,
Speaker 3: this is s hits the f and I don't like it,
Speaker 3: and I don't like what it says about geopolitics. Boom,
Speaker 3: they get sacked. Other people say, eh, yeah, you know
Speaker 3: this is good. You gotta make it work. They get sacked.
Speaker 4: This is a absolute crisis for diplomacy Monty Python levels
Speaker 4: of sackings taking place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sacks all the way down. Man, it's sacking fifth Avenue.
Speaker 4: Then, No, exactly, And like you said, Ben, at this point,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's so stinky and sacky that the president
Speaker 4: himself actually is forced to respond.
Speaker 5: There's no way around it.
Speaker 4: This is potentially blowing up into an outright diplomatic crisis.
Speaker 2: Yep, solutely. Let's also remember that this is now in
Speaker 2: February of twenty eleven. All of this is going down
Speaker 2: where even the United States President is getting involved.
Speaker 3: Right, So February is when it goes up to Potus
Speaker 3: and Congress. Right March is when Raymond Allen Davis becomes
Speaker 3: free and has to escape. But look for anybody in
Speaker 3: the audience, and I'm sure there are a few of
Speaker 3: us and have adventures. Be safe. You know well that
Speaker 3: any time the president has to go in public and
Speaker 3: say some stuff to respond, like to respond to an incident,
Speaker 3: you're in trouble. You know what I mean. It's like
Speaker 3: being a second grader and you hear the announcements at
Speaker 3: school and the principal gets on the mic and says, also,
Speaker 3: I want to have a quick word about Noel Brown
Speaker 3: or Dak Frederick right to the office, right right, right.
Speaker 3: There were some incidents at the neighboring high school, at
Speaker 3: the neighboring elementary schools. It's just a bad look all around.
Speaker 3: And we the public will never know what got discussed
Speaker 3: in those back rooms.
Speaker 2: No, no, we will not. We won't know the full
Speaker 2: story because it was really fishy, something weird was going on.
Speaker 2: What happened two months later? Anybody remember what happened two
Speaker 2: months later?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Bottabad no comment? Uh, the world's most wanted man was
Speaker 2: assassinated in a compound where there were stealth helicopters used.
Speaker 3: No comment.
Speaker 2: Where the CIA had been operating for Oh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: months and months and months trying to track down Osama
Speaker 2: bin laden via vaccinations.
Speaker 3: No comment. M Oh my gosh, that sounded sketchy. Yeah, right, fine, No,
Speaker 3: you're right, Matt, as as usual, you are absolutely correct.
Speaker 3: There are always a larger pieces at play. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you're right. What we can say is that Raymond Davis
Speaker 3: is not some kind of super villain. He's not some doctor. No,
Speaker 3: he's not some kind of James Bond. By his own account,
Speaker 3: he will deny you know, this double O seven appellation,
Speaker 3: that Appalachian appellation that people put on him. He's a
Speaker 3: kid from Wise County, Virginia. In his perspective, he's serving
Speaker 3: his country. He never never imagined that he might be
Speaker 3: the individual triggering such extreme events. But to know your
Speaker 3: earlier point about powder kegs right and boiling water, it's
Speaker 3: fair to ask if something like this would have happened
Speaker 3: inevitably right, Because the entire time this is happening, factions
Speaker 3: of an ISI know exactly where obl is it's just irrefutable.
Speaker 2: Yep. It was a delicate little game that was being played.
Speaker 2: Like everybody knows that, like to some extent, all sides
Speaker 2: know that there are Americans operating beneath the consulate or
Speaker 2: for the consulate or for the embassy who are inside
Speaker 2: the country searching for this person, and they have been
Speaker 2: for almost ten years.
Speaker 3: And like check his watch.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it. It's known. Everybody is just aware
Speaker 2: that this is happening, right, because it's it's if you
Speaker 2: thought it wasn't happening, you know, you're being naive on
Speaker 2: those levels.
Speaker 3: We're here for the museums, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: We're big fans of architecture and we like to see
Speaker 3: out of the way architecture. I'm sorry, officer, I did
Speaker 3: not know.
Speaker 2: I could not do that well exactly. But the Americans
Speaker 2: who are operating in Pakistan know that the intelligence services
Speaker 2: there are keeping an eye on them. So and if
Speaker 2: they believe, like they had around this time, that they
Speaker 2: had located the correct compound where Osama bin Laden was hiding,
Speaker 2: you have to that side is pretending like they don't know, right,
Speaker 2: and then the other side is trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what each other knows. It's just it gets so complicated.
Speaker 3: It's a weird, toxic relationship often with these countries, allies
Speaker 3: and enemies alike. To this very evening, we're gonna hear
Speaker 3: multiple differing accounts of what is called the Raymond Allen
Speaker 3: Davis incident in the West to our friends in Pakistan
Speaker 3: and points abroad. It's a harrowing parable about how no
Speaker 3: country should or trust the United States. This country, the
Speaker 3: US has a terrible reputation right now for sort of
Speaker 3: moving with the wind and the whims, which people don't like.
Speaker 3: I get it. You would you know, you crack a
Speaker 3: deal with one person who is supposedly in charge of
Speaker 3: the country. Four years later there's another person and they say, ah,
Speaker 3: forget that other guy. Here's my weird thing. How do
Speaker 3: you feel about how the civics And then you have
Speaker 3: to be like, I guess this is cool for four years.
Speaker 3: But to the United States, this is a moral play.
Speaker 3: This is the argument that if you send someone in,
Speaker 3: you may damn sure you get them back, and ideally
Speaker 3: you keep that invisible. This is a case where the
Speaker 3: conspiracy was revealed.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was. I didn't realize you guys that the
Speaker 2: Guardian newspaper is the out that officially stated out loud
Speaker 2: that Raymond Davis was employed by the CIA.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, they were first to the post on it.
Speaker 2: That was February twentieth, twenty eleven, so like well after
Speaker 2: the incident, and while while he's incarcerated, while all of
Speaker 2: the kerfuffle is beginning.
Speaker 3: Forces potus to respond, Yeah, the media pushed it, and
Speaker 3: the bag of Badgers is a parent. Neither Pakistan nor
Speaker 3: the US right now have come to a public agreement
Speaker 3: on this matter. Instead, both nations found an approachable stance. Right,
Speaker 3: we made correct with Islamic law. Right, so satisfying domestic
Speaker 3: population of Pakistan, if not the families of those people
Speaker 3: who were murdered. Honestly, the US individual got home safe.
Speaker 3: The US individual, wols I should say, because let's not
Speaker 3: forget Davis was not out there as a rogue lone wolf.
Speaker 3: They got back. Doesn't always happen. Sorry, that's how the
Speaker 3: sausage is made. The CIA and the ISI, they reset
Speaker 3: their chessboard once again, and they look towards the horizon,
Speaker 3: and the great game continues. As we wrap up tonight's episode,
Speaker 3: we went a little long, but thank you so much
Speaker 3: for tuning in, folks.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, there's more to the stuff that we were
Speaker 2: even able to cover, And this is a longer episode
Speaker 2: than we usually do on a single topic. But guys,
Speaker 2: look into this even further if you're interested in the
Speaker 2: ins and outs and some of the details and stuff.
Speaker 2: Just to recommend one source, you know, Ben, You've got
Speaker 2: the you can tell everybody the book that was actually
Speaker 2: written by Raven Davis. There's a pretty long New York
Speaker 2: Magazine article from twenty thirteen titled How a spy helped
Speaker 2: turn Pakistan against the United States. It's a pretty long read,
Speaker 2: but if you can gain access to that, we highly
Speaker 2: recommend it.
Speaker 3: We highly recommend mister Davis's words himself, the contractor, how
Speaker 3: I landed in a Pakistani prison and ignited a diplomatic crisis,
Speaker 3: and I don't want to lose what we set there previously. Again,
Speaker 3: the CIA, the ISI soldier on to continue. They reset
Speaker 3: the chessboard. They are looking toward a horizon, and the
Speaker 3: great game never stopped. It continues tonight. You can learn more,
Speaker 3: As Matt said, you can talk to us. Well, I
Speaker 3: know some of us are in the audience tonight. Who
Speaker 3: might be tourists you know, might be contractors at eshays,
Speaker 3: people who are fans of photographing museums.
Speaker 2: Your name right now is favorite tourist Ben.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a gift from some friends of the show. Uh,
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Speaker 3: You can send us a good old fashioned email. Where
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Speaker 4: Nope, you can sip to your heart's content at the
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Speaker 3: We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive. Be well aware, yet's unafraid. Sometimes the void
Speaker 3: writes back. Funny, isn't it how a bunch of very
Speaker 3: small and subtle decisions, when added together, can end up
Speaker 3: having such enormous consequences. That's a line from Raymond alan Davis.
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