Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. It's officially summer, and that
Speaker 1: means it's time for our tradition and here's the thing
Speaker 1: where our staff shares their favorite episodes from the archives
Speaker 1: in our Summer Staff Picks series. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: episodes was with filmmaker James Jones, director of the Apples series,
Speaker 1: wanted the escape of Carlos Gone. The conversation so intrigued
Speaker 1: me I wanted to explore the story even deeper and
Speaker 1: interview one of the subjects of the film, Michael Taylor,
Speaker 1: which I did earlier this year. Here's my conversation with
Speaker 1: James Jones and Michael Taylor. Bernie Madeoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam
Speaker 1: Bankman Freed. It's easy to think that shocking levels of
Speaker 1: greed and corruption are simply nothing new in the world
Speaker 1: of white collar crime. But what is new is an
Speaker 1: accused chief executive evading prosecution by escaping to a foreign
Speaker 1: country in a box. That's the story of Carlos gon,
Speaker 1: former CEO of both Nissan and Renault. Goen was arrested
Speaker 1: on the eve of a proposed merger between the two
Speaker 1: companies and charged with financial misconduct. He was first placed
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement and then house arrest, awaiting trial in Japan.
Speaker 1: That is until former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his
Speaker 1: son Peter shipped him off to Lebanon. The scandal ultimately
Speaker 1: resulted in the sentencing of the tailors and former Nissan
Speaker 1: executive Greg Kelly, while Goon walks free, maintaining his innocence.
Speaker 1: Documentarian James Jones, director of the BAFT winning Chernobyl The
Speaker 1: Last Tapes, brought this story to life in the four
Speaker 1: part series Wanted the Escape of Carlos Gon on Apple TV.
Speaker 1: The series weaves questions surrounding a corporate takedown and the
Speaker 1: potential framing of Gone with the claims of CEO excess.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what was the background of someone
Speaker 1: who went from CEO to fugitive in such a swift
Speaker 1: fall from grace.
Speaker 2: So he is a fascinating character. So he was born
Speaker 2: in Brazil, in a town in the deepest Amazonian jungle,
Speaker 2: grew up mainly in Lebanon, went to university in France,
Speaker 2: but was always kind of viewed as an outsider. You know,
Speaker 2: he was never really accepted by the French establishment. He
Speaker 2: never played the game of sucking up to politicians, going
Speaker 2: to the right clubs, you know, having dinners with captains
Speaker 2: of industry. He kind of thought he was so brilliant
Speaker 2: he could play by his own rules, which ultimately left
Speaker 2: him without many allies when it all came crashing down.
Speaker 2: He worked for Michelin, the tire company, which is where
Speaker 2: he kind of showed that he had this skill for
Speaker 2: like cost cutting and turning companies around, and then was
Speaker 2: recruited by Reno and became known as Lacoste Killer, and
Speaker 2: you know, broke kind of French unions and sacked a
Speaker 2: lot of people, shut down factories, was like hugely controversial.
Speaker 2: And then when Reno took over Nissan, they thought, this
Speaker 2: is the guy to go to Japan and just like
Speaker 2: modernize this company, be ruthless, fire the people he needs
Speaker 2: to fire, and just like save this company from death.
Speaker 1: It's so strange to hear someone reference going into the
Speaker 1: Nissan culture to strip down and to make a Japanese
Speaker 1: car company leaner and better and more competitive, when you're
Speaker 1: always under the impression that the Japanese companies, particularly car companies,
Speaker 1: are the leanest and meanest of them all. When Gone
Speaker 1: goes over to Japan, does he find a lot of
Speaker 1: fat there?
Speaker 2: He does. There were practices that had just always been
Speaker 2: the same way. There were you know, car companies, own
Speaker 2: shares in supermarkets, so all these kind of weird idiosyncrasies
Speaker 2: that the Japanese staff just saw as normal, you know,
Speaker 2: and it took an outsider like Going. And another interesting
Speaker 2: thing about Going is I think, you know, some people
Speaker 2: in Japan said to us, you know, he was viewed
Speaker 2: with great suspicion to begin with, but the fact that
Speaker 2: he was like culturally hard to place. You know, he
Speaker 2: wasn't French, he wasn't American, you know, he was willing
Speaker 2: to be the bad go Yeah, exactly. He didn't kind
Speaker 2: of stand on ceremony. He was absolutely ruthless, and on
Speaker 2: some level, perhaps because they were facing you know, complete extinction,
Speaker 2: they kind of went with it. And the results were
Speaker 2: so quick. He said, if I don't turn this round
Speaker 2: within three years, are quit. He turned it around within
Speaker 2: a year, and you know, it was just massive efficiencies
Speaker 2: straight off the bat. And you know, I think initially
Speaker 2: people thought he'd cooked the books, but it was it
Speaker 2: was just the same ruthlessness he had, and he's he's
Speaker 2: an interesting guy because he's obviously brilliant, but he's not
Speaker 2: someone like a Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg who has
Speaker 2: one design or iconic brand or something that's associated with him.
Speaker 2: What he did, he just had this focus and this
Speaker 2: work ethic, and he inspired the people around him to
Speaker 2: commit to going further than they'd ever pushed before and
Speaker 2: sticking with him when he made hard decisions. And so
Speaker 2: what was so fascinating making the series is you see
Speaker 2: how all these things that made him brilliant, as the
Speaker 2: success started to go to his head, he kind of
Speaker 2: lost them. You know, he wasn't working so hard. He
Speaker 2: was spending a lot of time on the private jet
Speaker 2: go you know, throwing parties at Vesai, going to Rio Carnival,
Speaker 2: you know, whereas his employees were still buying their own
Speaker 2: stationery and you know, desperately working and trying podcasts wherever
Speaker 2: they could. And actually, like it was just a really old,
Speaker 2: kind of tragic story of success. It's like losing sight
Speaker 2: of what made you so great and suddenly people around
Speaker 2: you thinking, you know, this emperor has no clothes.
Speaker 1: I'm aware of this story, and you decided you wanted
Speaker 1: to make this documentary after Gone went to Lebanon and
Speaker 1: after the tailors went to prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I became aware of the story really when
Speaker 2: he escaped. You know, I remember the headlines around the world.
Speaker 2: The New York Post had this like enormous double bass case,
Speaker 2: and you know, the rumor was he was smuggled out
Speaker 2: in a music equipment box. But the film came about,
Speaker 2: I think it was the summer of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: and Apple wanted to do a series on the story.
Speaker 2: They had approached this production company. At that point, we
Speaker 2: had no access to Gon. It was a couple of
Speaker 2: months before the tailors were extradited to Japan, effectively swapping
Speaker 2: places with the man they'd helped escape. So we started
Speaker 2: with very little really. You know, we knew this was
Speaker 2: an amazing story. There was a kind of Hollywood heist
Speaker 2: element to it of one of the world's most famous
Speaker 2: business people being smuggled out of an island, a very
Speaker 2: kind of closely monitored country, smuggled inside a music box
Speaker 2: on a private jet.
Speaker 1: I want to be clear for our audience. When you
Speaker 1: say music box, you mean the cases that they stowed
Speaker 1: musical equipment.
Speaker 2: In right exactly. Yeah, and there was like a guitar
Speaker 2: case on top.
Speaker 1: Gone was a bit of a band, and there was
Speaker 1: a little guy. So that made getting him out of
Speaker 1: the country slightly easier than I would have been if
Speaker 1: he was six foot five or something. So you became
Speaker 1: aware of the story after the escape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The name was familiar. You know, he was
Speaker 2: this kind of superstar in the car industry. But you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a journalist a filmmaker, but I don't follow the
Speaker 2: car industry that closely. I mean, I remember, you know,
Speaker 2: there was shock you know, in Japan, he was like
Speaker 2: a demigod. You know, there were like manga comic books
Speaker 2: about his life. He was voted you know, the man
Speaker 2: women would most like to have children with, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's not a conventionally handsome guy. So you know,
Speaker 2: he had this aura and this incredible reputation and then overnight,
Speaker 2: suddenly all that just came crashing down.
Speaker 1: I watched the film and I look at a timeline
Speaker 1: when you likely got involved. So when you see the party,
Speaker 1: he goes to the Versai at a restaurant Corveracai, and
Speaker 1: he has this party, and yet you have a lot
Speaker 1: of footage from that party. How did he film the party?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Ghones had organized the Marie Antoinette themed
Speaker 2: party at Versailles, and like, if you know your history,
Speaker 2: Marie Antoinette is you know the symbol. You know, her
Speaker 2: famous quote is let the meat cakes. She's the symbol
Speaker 2: of kind of extreme inequality. And you know, within France,
Speaker 2: people getting their come up, and so like perhaps an
Speaker 2: unwise party theme for a man who's using his company
Speaker 2: brace the yeah, bit of hoo race, you can say.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the party organizers hired a videographer to shoot
Speaker 2: all these people dressed in kind of Marie Antoinette themed
Speaker 2: you know, garbs, and it's kind of completely revolutionary France. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it stirs up a revolutionary in all of us,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: See, so you get some wonderful footage things like that,
Speaker 1: the party, you're sit downs with Gone and his wife.
Speaker 1: But Going in particular that shot I'm assuming in Lebanon
Speaker 1: after the fact, when he's when he's once he's escaped
Speaker 1: to Lebanon exactly, and and Gone strikes me as it
Speaker 1: seemed like one of those situations where James Jones could
Speaker 1: have left the room for several hours and gone could
Speaker 1: have spoken into the camera ceaselessly, you know, decrying his
Speaker 1: innocence about what he seems like somebody who he could
Speaker 1: go on and on forever to maintain his innocence. He's
Speaker 1: almost never going to be satisfied.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he feels wronged. You know, when I asked him,
Speaker 2: do you feel sorry for the victims in this story?
Speaker 2: You know, there's been a huge amount of collateral damage,
Speaker 2: lives ruined by this whole saga, and he kind of
Speaker 2: there's one moment he looked blankly at me and said,
Speaker 2: if there's a victim here, it's me. You know, can't
Speaker 2: he can't see beyond that. He feels there was a
Speaker 2: conspiracy in Japan to take him down, and everything flowed
Speaker 2: from that.
Speaker 1: But but at the same time your documentary and I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, maybe this is just what I glean
Speaker 1: from it. There's a whiff of the idea, or even
Speaker 1: just a slight whiff of the idea that that's certainly possible.
Speaker 1: Meaning you walk away from watching your program with the
Speaker 1: idea that the political life and the policies that are
Speaker 1: enforced by the Japanese government are very often controlled by
Speaker 1: business itself. Nissan isn't just some company. Nissan, like Sony,
Speaker 1: is a huge company with tentacles into every corner of
Speaker 1: the world, and one of the major companies with the
Speaker 1: Japanese headquarters. And to say that people wanted to derail
Speaker 1: the Reno Nissan merger is not a foolish idea, correct, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, the interesting thing about this series, in this
Speaker 2: whole story, is that it's not a black and white
Speaker 2: story of kind of good versus evil. There are lots
Speaker 2: of kind of contradictory truths, and like, there's no doubt
Speaker 2: in my mind that there was a conspiracy to take
Speaker 2: down Carlos Gone. You know, you believe there was a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: There was absolutely at first. And so Nissan is like,
Speaker 2: as you say, one of the crown jewels in Japanese industry.
Speaker 2: The thought of that being, you know, subsumed by a
Speaker 2: French company Reno was just an insult to Japanese pride,
Speaker 2: and so they wanted and they realized that Carlos Going,
Speaker 2: having led them to huge success, saved them from extinction,
Speaker 2: was now thinking about pulling off this merger, partly because
Speaker 2: he would do quite well out of it.
Speaker 1: How was Reno viewed as a car company.
Speaker 2: I think by the Japanese as you know, a kind
Speaker 2: of poor relation. You know, they didn't admire French kind
Speaker 2: of mechanics design. They bought a huge steak in Nissan
Speaker 2: at a time when Nissan was was about to go bust,
Speaker 2: so it was a kind of marriage or convenience. But
Speaker 2: then the idea that they would be fully subsumed by
Speaker 2: a full alliance was just anathema to them. So there's
Speaker 2: no doubt in my mind that Nissan and the Japanese
Speaker 2: justice system decided to take Carlos going down.
Speaker 1: Eventually is excoriated for paying himself huge amounts of money,
Speaker 1: and the Japanese were like, listen, no one deserves to
Speaker 1: be paid that amount of money when you're producing cars.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one at the head of a company,
Speaker 1: no matter how successful it is, should be paid this
Speaker 1: amount of money. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: That's right? And I think it's partly a cultural thing,
Speaker 2: you know. I think in France extreme wealth is viewed
Speaker 2: with great suspicion. Likewise in Japan, where you're kind of
Speaker 2: you know, these companies are kind of hierarchical. You work
Speaker 2: there for your whole lifetime and incrementally increase your salary.
Speaker 2: Carlos Gone comes some more of a kind of American
Speaker 2: business background, where the CEO is rewarded, you know, proportionately
Speaker 2: with the company's profits. So he thought he was worth,
Speaker 2: you know, five times what he was getting. He saw
Speaker 2: himself on a level with Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, all
Speaker 2: these kind of people. Carlos Gon's problem is that it
Speaker 2: wasn't Carlos Going Inc. He was working for two companies
Speaker 2: that had shareholders. He was an employee of these two companies,
Speaker 2: whereas in his mind he became bigger than these companies
Speaker 2: and deserved whatever he wanted to take.
Speaker 1: Now, when you think that gol was framed, you think
Speaker 1: that he was set up in order again to derail
Speaker 1: the merger, and the Japanese powers that be wanted to
Speaker 1: hobble him, if you will. How much was he being
Speaker 1: paid in those final years and how much was he
Speaker 1: accused of stealing from the company.
Speaker 2: So the interesting thing is that he kind of operated
Speaker 2: in this gray area where he was paid by both
Speaker 2: companies and he could kind of operate the way he
Speaker 2: wanted because there wasn't the scrutiny. He surrounded himself with
Speaker 2: yes men at both companies. He spent a lot of
Speaker 2: his time, increasingly on a private jet, often flying to
Speaker 2: places not on business but to kind of enjoy the
Speaker 2: trappings of his success. But what's interesting is that even
Speaker 2: though it was a conspiracy at first, they almost then
Speaker 2: stumbled across evidence of real corruption, you know, so almost
Speaker 2: by mistake they found on the laptop.
Speaker 1: On the Nissan side of the Rennao side.
Speaker 2: So the Nissan lawyers basically went and searched his former
Speaker 2: lawyer's office in Beirut, discovered a laptop which had a
Speaker 2: hard drive with all these flows of money which he'd
Speaker 2: kept secret from Nissan basically to and from Middle Eastern businessmen.
Speaker 2: And he was writing checks from Nissan and Reno and
Speaker 2: then through very convoluted means, through shell companies and so on,
Speaker 2: he was receiving tens of millions of dollars back into
Speaker 2: his pocket, and he kept that secret. And when we
Speaker 2: put it to him, he doesn't really have a convincing
Speaker 2: answer for why, you know, he would be writing these
Speaker 2: checks and receiving money and keeping it secret from his employees.
Speaker 2: So that is why he's now wanted not only in
Speaker 2: Japan from where he escaped, but the French now want
Speaker 2: to put him on trial for corruption.
Speaker 1: So I guess what's frustrating and confused for me is
Speaker 1: that on one hand people maintained that the Japanese government
Speaker 1: set him up. On the other hand, he stole from
Speaker 1: both companies. Which is it right?
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing, you know, we we pose the
Speaker 2: question in film four. The title is victim or villain,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't need necessarily need to be either or
Speaker 2: you know, he can be a victim of a conspiracy
Speaker 2: who suffered greatly, was in solitary confinement, interrogated without a lawyer.
Speaker 2: You know, they call the Japanese justice system the hostage
Speaker 2: justice system because you're effectively kept hostage until you confess.
Speaker 2: So there's no doubt that he and his family were
Speaker 2: victims at that point. The problem for him is that
Speaker 2: they did then stumble across real corruption and the case
Speaker 2: just became you know, these allegations are much much more serious,
Speaker 2: and so it's very hard for him to dismiss the
Speaker 2: label of villain unless he's willing to go and stand
Speaker 2: trial in France, which he's not. You know, right now,
Speaker 2: he's a fugitive in Lebanon, and as far as I
Speaker 2: can see, that's where he's going to spend the rest
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 1: Director James Jones, and later I'll speak with Mike Taylor himself.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy conversations with documentary directors uncovering corporate corruption,
Speaker 1: check out my episode with Alex Gibney, director of Enron,
Speaker 1: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Speaker 3: The ghosts of all my films tend to follow me,
Speaker 3: and I often keep in touch with sources and interview subjects,
Speaker 3: and in odd ways they keep coming back to films
Speaker 3: I make henceforth, so they kind of reverberate. It's a
Speaker 3: little bit like that moment in Ghostbusters. So they say,
Speaker 3: don't cross the streams. Well, my streams are constantly getting crossed.
Speaker 3: It seems like characters from one film are intruding into another.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Alex Gibney, go
Speaker 1: to Here's Thething dot org. After the break, James Jones
Speaker 1: shares the intricacies of how Carlos Gon was smuggled out
Speaker 1: of Japan in a box. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. Former automobile executive Carlos Gon
Speaker 1: is a fugitive currently living the life of a free
Speaker 1: man in Lebanon. I was curious to learn that while
Speaker 1: the Japanese authorities couldn't get their hands on going due
Speaker 1: to Lebanon's extradition laws, was the money he allegedly laundered recoverable.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I mean, I think some of
Speaker 2: his assets in France were frozen. I think some of
Speaker 2: his assets in the States as well. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think most of that money that ended up in
Speaker 2: his pocket was in shell companies arranged from Lebanon, you know,
Speaker 2: either within Lebanon itself or it in kind of tax
Speaker 2: havens around the world. So I think Carlos Gohn is
Speaker 2: still living a pretty comfortable life. He's living in the
Speaker 2: mansion paid for by Nissan. He's got his super yacht
Speaker 2: paid for by the you know, the money from the
Speaker 2: Middle Eastern businessman. So I think the thing that kills
Speaker 2: him is that his legacy has gone. You know, his
Speaker 2: reputation will never recover. He's a fugitive. We all know
Speaker 2: him now as a man who escaped in a box,
Speaker 2: and that kills him because he would have gone down
Speaker 2: in you know, the Automotive Hall of Fame as one
Speaker 2: of the genius businessmen of the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: So he decides to escape. Now, the tailors, I want
Speaker 1: you to describe how they come together. I doubt that
Speaker 1: tailors have a website called We'll put You in a
Speaker 1: Box and Smuggle You at Lebanon dot com. How did
Speaker 1: that relationship get forged?
Speaker 2: So, Mike Taylor is a former Green Beret. He'd served
Speaker 2: around the world, and then after leaving the military, he'd
Speaker 2: actually spent some time in Lebanon during the Civil War.
Speaker 2: There had met his wife, who is Lebanese, who is
Speaker 2: a kind of distant cousin of Carlos Gohen's wife. So
Speaker 2: I think Carlos Gohan's wife kind of started putting the
Speaker 2: word out in Lebanon, saying, you know, Carlos is going
Speaker 2: to die in a Japanese prison. He's in sology confinement.
Speaker 2: It's freezing cold. You know, he's not going to, you know,
Speaker 2: live much longer. I'm never going to properly see him again.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Beirut is like a big village. Everyone knows everyone, and
Speaker 2: someone said, there's this guy, Mike Taylor, and he's got
Speaker 2: quite a reputation. He'd helped journalists escape from the Taliban.
Speaker 2: He'd he had a specialty in kids who are abducted
Speaker 2: by one parent. He'd go in and get the kid
Speaker 2: back for the parent who paid him to do it.
Speaker 2: And so he just had this like amazing reputation. He
Speaker 2: met Carlos Gohan's wife in Beirut. They talked about a
Speaker 2: possible plan. But you know, this is not getting someone
Speaker 2: out of Egypt or something like that.
Speaker 1: This is Japan.
Speaker 2: It's an island, a CCTV everywhere going is under house arrest.
Speaker 2: This is like, you know, for someone like Mike Taylor,
Speaker 2: this is you know, if you're a mountain climber, it's
Speaker 2: like climbing Everest or whatever. This is just like the
Speaker 2: ultimate challenge.
Speaker 1: Tayl we used to call a soldier of fortune, right exactly.
Speaker 1: This is a great challenge for him.
Speaker 2: It's a great challenge, and you know, I'm sure he
Speaker 2: realizes that at some point it could be quite lucrative,
Speaker 2: but I think just and also I think on a
Speaker 2: personal level, he met Carlos Goen's wife and felt great sympathy,
Speaker 2: felt like there was an injustice, thought the Japanese system
Speaker 2: was was unfair and cruel, and so he started formulating
Speaker 2: this plan. And you know, they could have gone by boat,
Speaker 2: but it was winter, the sea could be choppy, and
Speaker 2: he thought, let's get him in a Let's get him
Speaker 2: in a box, take him on a private jet, you know,
Speaker 2: small airport, not in Tokyo. You know, the security is
Speaker 2: more lax on private jets. He did a test and
Speaker 2: saw that they check the luggage going into it into Japan,
Speaker 2: but not coming out. He made sure the box was
Speaker 2: too big to fit through the X rays. So he
Speaker 2: was like, you know, it's a military operation, planning every
Speaker 2: single detail because he was prepared. He was prepared.
Speaker 1: But for me, when I'm curious about us, who contacted
Speaker 1: TA who's working with Gone? That access as tailor?
Speaker 2: So that I mean basically because Carlos Gone was pretty
Speaker 2: clear that his phone was tapped, and you know he
Speaker 2: could tell that because one day he called a newspaper
Speaker 2: journalist to say, they're a guy standing outside my house
Speaker 2: and we have evidence that Nissan did use spies to
Speaker 2: follow him and other people they were kind of going after.
Speaker 2: And the day after he called the journalist, the spies
Speaker 2: didn't come to stand outside his house, so he thought, okay,
Speaker 2: I know they tapped my phone. So he had to
Speaker 2: get a special burner phone, but was essentially communicating with
Speaker 2: his wife, who was communicating with Mike Taylor. So his
Speaker 2: wife was in Lebanon at this time. So she is
Speaker 2: a fascinating character because she's his second wife. She's kind
Speaker 2: of beautiful, blonde, charismatic, incredibly warm, and she was kind
Speaker 2: of associated with Gohon's transformation from this kind of nerdy
Speaker 2: mister Bean character, yes, to someone who loved lavish parties.
Speaker 4: And yes, stressed different, dress differently, had hair implant, you know,
Speaker 4: laser eye surgery, sharp suits, and you know, suddenly was
Speaker 4: on the red carpet at can you know, this was.
Speaker 2: Like a totally unknown world. This is red carpet going exactly.
Speaker 2: So she was seen, I mean, a bimbo is too strong,
Speaker 2: but certainly someone who enjoyed the finer things in life.
Speaker 2: But what you saw over the course of this whole
Speaker 2: saga is that she, first of all, when he was
Speaker 2: locked up, she went out on the media and kind
Speaker 2: of almost single handedly changed the world's perception of the
Speaker 2: Japanese justice system to the point where even a UN
Speaker 2: body issued a report about hostage justice. You know, the
Speaker 2: terrible violations of human rights. Now, you might say, Carlos
Speaker 2: Gohn is an unlikely champion of human rights, but that
Speaker 2: that's what his wife did. And then she also played
Speaker 2: this kind of amazing strategic role in pulling off this escape,
Speaker 2: which she doesn't want to talk about clearly for legal reasons,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's quite clear that she was pulling
Speaker 2: the string. But she now within Lebanon is kind of
Speaker 2: celebrated as this power behind the throne who pulled off
Speaker 2: this amazing plot. Obviously gone was the man who was
Speaker 2: brave enough to actually lie down inside this box in
Speaker 2: the dark and just pray that he made it to Lebanon.
Speaker 2: But I think, you know, I think that's interesting about
Speaker 2: his own psychology, right. I mean, he's a man who
Speaker 2: is willing to take these incredibly high pressure decisions, and
Speaker 2: he can seem almost quite robotic sometimes. So he just
Speaker 2: weighed up the kind of cost benefit and the risk
Speaker 2: of getting in that box and risking everything, and he
Speaker 2: thought it's worth it, because otherwise, you know, I die
Speaker 2: in prison in Japan.
Speaker 1: So the Tailors are arrested. There is an extradition treaty
Speaker 1: and some kind of legal arrangements between the United States
Speaker 1: government and the Japanese government and the Tailors are arrested
Speaker 1: in the US first, correct, right at the behest of
Speaker 1: the Japanese government. Absolutely yeah, and always make no attempt
Speaker 1: to flee that prosecution.
Speaker 2: No. I mean, the Tailors could have laid low in
Speaker 2: Lebanon like Carlos Gone, and you know, enjoyed the fruits
Speaker 2: of their amazingly successful escape, but they wanted to go
Speaker 2: back to the States. They didn't want to hide away.
Speaker 2: I think deep down they thought it wasn't such a
Speaker 2: serious crime, and you know, the States wouldn't give up
Speaker 2: their own citizens, let alone a kind of war hero.
Speaker 2: But they underestimated how mad the Japanese were. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, this was a national humiliation to lose its
Speaker 2: most famous prisoner, who pops up in Lebanon and gives
Speaker 2: a press conference, you know, slamming the Japanese justice system.
Speaker 2: So I think they were so determined to get the
Speaker 2: Tailor's back because they knew they'd never get Carlos Gone.
Speaker 1: They are extrad added to Japan and they serve how
Speaker 1: much time in Japan?
Speaker 2: So they served nearly two years, and it was brutal, correct,
Speaker 2: it was brutal. I mean it was like you know,
Speaker 2: solitary confinement, freezing cold cells. Mike Taylor is not a
Speaker 2: young man. You know, he came out of prison, you know,
Speaker 2: incredibly gaunt and sick. He looked about thirty years older
Speaker 2: than he really is. They told us these stories that
Speaker 2: they'd be forced to they'd be given a big piece
Speaker 2: of cardboard and they'd have to rip it into smaller
Speaker 2: and smaller pieces. Yes, and I think the prison system
Speaker 2: would say that was entertainment, that was to you know,
Speaker 2: stop them being bored. But you know, Mike Taylor said
Speaker 2: that his fingers were like painful, and it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, sounds to me more like torture rather than entertainment.
Speaker 2: So they certainly had an even harder time than Carlos
Speaker 2: going in prison. And you know, I think for Mike Taylor,
Speaker 2: the thing that was even more painful than the kind
Speaker 2: of physical discomfort and hardship was that he'd involved his son.
Speaker 2: And his son is not a kind of hardened war veteran.
Speaker 2: He's a you know, young guy in his twenties who
Speaker 2: probably completely adores his dad, has always wanted to emulate
Speaker 2: his dad. So the chance to be part, even a
Speaker 2: small part of his most outlandish plot was probably just
Speaker 2: too exciting to turn down, but then no one would
Speaker 2: have ever thought that he'd end up spending you know,
Speaker 2: years in a Japanese prison as well.
Speaker 1: And in the program Gone, I believe in one of
Speaker 1: your sitdowns with him, he's quoted as saying something along
Speaker 1: the lines of everybody knew.
Speaker 2: The risks they were taking, yeah.
Speaker 1: And so Gone does not have a lot of sympathy
Speaker 1: or empathy for the tailors.
Speaker 2: I was genuinely surprised how little he had.
Speaker 1: Beg insight into Gone that comment. Real incided to go God.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Goan's about gone totally, and he uses
Speaker 1: people to get what he wants and to move along
Speaker 1: the game board as he desires. And then he doesn't
Speaker 1: really when he does somebody use for you anymore. It
Speaker 1: seems like he just forgets about you. One thing that
Speaker 1: I was confused about was what was the fee that
Speaker 1: the tailors were told they would be paid for the
Speaker 1: escape just the escape itself.
Speaker 2: So they were given expenses ahead of the escape, which
Speaker 2: was I think one point three million dollars, which was
Speaker 2: just to cover private planes, you know, a reki, the
Speaker 2: pilots or you know all those but you know, and
Speaker 2: probably a bit for yourself as well. But Mike had
Speaker 2: always said, after the fact, we will we'll talk money.
Speaker 2: You know, the priority is getting you out after we
Speaker 2: do it. And I think they did come to an
Speaker 2: arrangement afterwards for some money in the in the low millions.
Speaker 2: But then Mike and his son spent years in Japanese
Speaker 2: prison and say they've got kind of a million dollars
Speaker 2: of legal fees, which Goane had assured them he would pay,
Speaker 2: and to date has he paid. He's paid them a
Speaker 2: tiny fraction of that.
Speaker 1: Is it difficult for them to take Goan's money? Is
Speaker 1: that the legal issue?
Speaker 2: Well, they can't touch him. I think, you know, Mike
Speaker 2: has gone to Lebanon to meet Going and kind of
Speaker 2: appeal to his decency exactly. You know, it's like, I
Speaker 2: saved your life, unique brand of decency when Gone got
Speaker 2: out of the box on the private jet and he
Speaker 2: said to Mike Taylor, you know you saved my life,
Speaker 2: And he really did. Like if it wasn't for Mike Taylor,
Speaker 2: Carlos Gohen would still be in a Japanese prison and
Speaker 2: Mike Taylor would have just been living a free man
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Where is Taylor now?
Speaker 2: He's back home in Massachusetts and where's his son? His
Speaker 2: son is in Dubai kind of starting out various businesses.
Speaker 2: I think is.
Speaker 1: Taylor willing to talk about what happened or is he
Speaker 1: better off not talking about what happened. I mean, he
Speaker 1: served his time.
Speaker 2: He served his time. You know, he gave us his
Speaker 2: first interview and Peter Taylor and you know, he kind
Speaker 2: of trusted we were doing it right. He didn't want
Speaker 2: it just to be the Carlos Goon show as well.
Speaker 2: But I think he knows now because he has spoken
Speaker 2: out about feeling let down by going and you know,
Speaker 2: the legal fees not being paid. I think he recognizes
Speaker 2: that that relationship is over. He's not going to receive
Speaker 2: a pennymore.
Speaker 1: Right now, when you're sitting down and doing the one
Speaker 1: on ones with Gone, you did them in Lebanon. Correct? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you did hours and hours of interviews with him,
Speaker 1: correct or limited.
Speaker 2: He's he's an impatient guy. But as long as you're
Speaker 2: on top topics he likes talking about. He'll give you
Speaker 2: all day. It's when you start asking the tough questions
Speaker 2: he suddenly starts looking at his watch.
Speaker 1: You know, ah, did you ask the tough questions? We
Speaker 1: did yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we asked about the omar and allegations. We
Speaker 2: also asked, you know, his his dad was a convicted
Speaker 2: murderer priest.
Speaker 1: That's amazing part of the story.
Speaker 2: And you know, as his wife said, you know, Gon
Speaker 2: basically just shut down that whole topic. You know, he
Speaker 2: was a kid, his father was accused of killing a priest,
Speaker 2: was sentenced to death. Goan was kind of six years old.
Speaker 2: It must have been incredibly traumatic and formative. But it's
Speaker 2: a secret. You know, no one talks about it. It's
Speaker 2: kind of known about Lebanon, but had never been reported.
Speaker 2: Goan had always refused to talk about it. But what
Speaker 2: was so interesting is that his wife, Carol said, his
Speaker 2: whole life has been trying to prove to his dad
Speaker 2: that he's not his dad. And then you think, my god,
Speaker 2: he's tried to prove that he's not a criminal like
Speaker 2: his dad, but he's ended up breaking the law, you know,
Speaker 2: now a fugitive in Lebanon. It's just like kind of
Speaker 2: come full circle. So I thought that was just so
Speaker 2: revealing of his mentality and drive.
Speaker 1: When you should something like this, it's presumed that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you leave out that you might
Speaker 1: have wished you had left in Was that the case?
Speaker 2: I think almost everything is in there. There were a
Speaker 2: few people who knew Gon very well, who would only
Speaker 2: speak to us on background, but who gave us the
Speaker 2: idea of him as a narcissist, and you know, helped
Speaker 2: us understand his psychology to kind of join the dots
Speaker 2: of the facts we had. For instance, we had the
Speaker 2: contents of his mobile phone when he was arrested and
Speaker 2: he was like totting up his personal wealth, and there
Speaker 2: was the final note was and if I pull off
Speaker 2: this merger, I'll become a billionaire. And so like we
Speaker 2: had insights like that to him. But there are a
Speaker 2: few people who had been very close to him for
Speaker 2: a number of years that we would have liked to
Speaker 2: go on camera. But in terms of the key players
Speaker 2: like having gone and his wife and then the tailors,
Speaker 2: those are the key players who who we just needed
Speaker 2: to have to make it feel like we're telling the
Speaker 2: full story.
Speaker 1: Were you commissioned to do this? Did Apple commission you?
Speaker 1: Or this was your pro Apple commissioned it? Yet? God,
Speaker 1: And if we go down your filmography, Dispatches, Panorama, This World,
Speaker 1: the Frontline episodes, Children of guys are more than a
Speaker 1: few of them commissions or you like commissions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a mixture. I mean the last film I
Speaker 2: did before this was about Chernobyl, and that was my
Speaker 2: idea that we then took to Sky and HBO. I'm
Speaker 2: working on a Russia film now that's independently funded that
Speaker 2: we will hope to premiere at film festivals and then,
Speaker 2: and that's been actually great working in a different way.
Speaker 2: So you're not necessary boroughly answering straight to a broadcast
Speaker 2: or streamer. I think streamers are more prescriptive probably than
Speaker 2: traditional broadcasters, right. I think I've been lucky solec Chernobyl.
Speaker 2: It was a very clear concept of like telling the
Speaker 2: story entirely through archive, a lot of it unseen, and
Speaker 2: you know, I think you just try and make sure
Speaker 2: that you accept the commission from people who buy into
Speaker 2: that vision. So I've never had a situation where someone
Speaker 2: has wanted the film to be something completely different.
Speaker 1: So pretty much get that sorted at upfront.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You guys both want the same thing, exactly, So I've
Speaker 1: never felt arguments about what stays in and what's gets
Speaker 1: cut out.
Speaker 2: It'll be Yeah, you get minor notes, but I think
Speaker 2: like maybe, unlike with a movie where you have like
Speaker 2: studio execs, you know, demanding major changes, I think from
Speaker 2: the whole a doc director, at least in my experience,
Speaker 2: you feel like it's always your own and you might
Speaker 2: have to compromise on a couple of things, but it's
Speaker 2: your vision that they're buying into. But maybe I've just
Speaker 2: been lucky.
Speaker 1: Now does go and roam the streets of Lebanon of
Speaker 1: be rude or where have you? Freely? Does he have
Speaker 1: to mask himself? Because the guy that gets put in
Speaker 1: a box in Japan and sent to Lebanon could justice
Speaker 1: easily be kidnapped, put in a box and shipped to
Speaker 1: Japan and go you know, round trip if you will.
Speaker 2: I mean, and we know who might put him in
Speaker 2: the box and take him back. Right there's a guy
Speaker 2: who's got a who's probably seeking revenge right now. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he drives around with heavy security. You know, he has
Speaker 2: armed guards. He's very careful about the way he travels.
Speaker 2: And you know, Lebanon, it's not just about being sent
Speaker 2: back to Japan. But Lebanon is a very unstable place.
Speaker 2: So although it's you know, beautiful country, great food, good beaches.
Speaker 2: You know, you can walk in the mountains. You know,
Speaker 2: Hezbolaar is one of the largest parties, and that you know,
Speaker 2: it feels like it's constantly on the brink of economic collapse,
Speaker 2: civil war. So he's trapped in a place that for
Speaker 2: a man who's accustomed to flying the world on private
Speaker 2: jets and living, you know, the life of ultimate freedom,
Speaker 2: he's constrained. He's constrained and you know, who knows what
Speaker 2: Lebanon will look like in five years.
Speaker 1: Where's Kelly now?
Speaker 2: Kelly's back home in Nashville. So Kelly was his kind
Speaker 2: of right hand man, the man who was kind of
Speaker 2: tasked with keeping going at the company. As he said,
Speaker 2: Goan was like the Michael Jordan of the car industry,
Speaker 2: and it was my job to make sure he didn't
Speaker 2: go anywhere.
Speaker 1: His story in the show is painful because you really
Speaker 1: see him suffer. Right, you know, the tailors committed a crime.
Speaker 1: The tailors, although their hearts were in the right place,
Speaker 1: they were mercenaries. They took money, They committed a crime.
Speaker 1: Goan is probably guilty of some of what they're saying.
Speaker 1: He is at least, oh they should pay. At least
Speaker 1: it appears that way, at least a layman would would
Speaker 1: say that. But Kelly seems like the one person of
Speaker 1: the project was purely innocent. Yeah, he didn't deserve any
Speaker 1: of what happened to him.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And they tricked him into coming over to Japan
Speaker 2: knowing that he needed back surgery. He was in agony,
Speaker 2: so he had this incredibly long flight. They assumed that
Speaker 2: he would just be desperate to go home. When they
Speaker 2: confronted him with these charges, he'd sign whatever they wanted
Speaker 2: and he'd throw going under the bus.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you've got on the plane. I know,
Speaker 1: why did he go? Who's his lawyer? I know?
Speaker 2: I know, Well, there is there is one person in
Speaker 2: particular who was like Greg Kelly's protege, who is the
Speaker 2: one who called him back, who he trusted mistakenly, and
Speaker 2: you know they underestimated Greg Kelly. He was just like, well,
Speaker 2: these charges aren't true. I can't possibly sign this, And
Speaker 2: he ended up spending three years of his life stuck
Speaker 2: in Japan.
Speaker 1: What are you working on now?
Speaker 2: So it's a film about Russian assassinations, which is we're
Speaker 2: submitting to festivals for next year. But he finished, we're
Speaker 2: getting close to the end, but it feels like we're
Speaker 2: living no. So we're gonna hopefully premiere a festival early
Speaker 2: next year and then take it from there.
Speaker 1: So when this is over, when you're done with Carlos, goon,
Speaker 1: guys getting stuffed in boxes, Russian assassinations, I'm assuming the
Speaker 1: project you're doing next is something like the History of Candy.
Speaker 2: That would be lovely.
Speaker 1: My Thanks to documentary filmmaker James Jones, I recently had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to speak with Michael Taylor, the former Green
Speaker 1: Beret that kept Carlos going from rotting in a Japanese prison,
Speaker 1: but then ended up serving time there himself for his
Speaker 1: role in the escape. Taylor's background linked up perfectly for
Speaker 1: the job. He trained with the Army Special Forces and
Speaker 1: became a Green Beret. After his time in the service,
Speaker 1: Taylor worked with the FBI and atf and as a
Speaker 1: private security contractor, providing risk assessments and going on rescue missions.
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear from Taylor what it takes to
Speaker 1: become an elite soldier in the military.
Speaker 5: You're going to be very strong mentally, and there's a
Speaker 5: bit of cockiness that goes along with it, you know.
Speaker 5: I was talking to a major that worked with my dad.
Speaker 5: My dad would as a career soldier as well. And
Speaker 5: a major that worked with my dad who was rifted
Speaker 5: and then became my recruiter, and he was telling me,
Speaker 5: you know, you're going to join special Forces.
Speaker 1: You're going to do well.
Speaker 5: You're going to have to push yourself because everybody doesn't
Speaker 5: make it, he says. And it takes a bit of
Speaker 5: hackingness to make it, he says. And nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 5: just you know, be humble about it. But it does
Speaker 5: take some self confidence to step on a ramp of
Speaker 5: a C one or a C five a galaxy at
Speaker 5: forty one thousand feet at night, where you see the
Speaker 5: curvature of the earth and you're going to step off
Speaker 5: into a foreign country you've never been before. So it
Speaker 5: does take a little bit of self confidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I'm assuming you did not know who Gone
Speaker 1: was before you were engaged in all this activity. You
Speaker 1: didn't know him, That's correct, I did not. You never
Speaker 1: knew him, So who reaches out to you?
Speaker 5: Well, it's it's interesting. There were two couples in Beirut
Speaker 5: that were having dinner one night. One of the ladies,
Speaker 5: I guess the subject came up about Carlos being stuck
Speaker 5: over there and needed they needed to rescue him. But
Speaker 5: it's just a monumental task. It's just impossible to get done.
Speaker 5: And one of the ladies there that I happened to know, said, well,
Speaker 5: if my husband was over there, the guy i'd called
Speaker 5: me Mike Taylor. I didn't know this until, you know,
Speaker 5: a year later or so, and the couple says, oh,
Speaker 5: I know him. He helped me out in Iraq once
Speaker 5: because this guy sells insurance and he needed to get
Speaker 5: into the green zone over there, so I helped him
Speaker 5: out as a friend of a friend. So he's the
Speaker 5: one that called me and said, hey, we've got this situation.
Speaker 5: We need a guy to get him out of a place.
Speaker 5: And he didn't give me any details, and I said, well,
Speaker 5: you know, I got a brown dog.
Speaker 1: How big is the dog?
Speaker 5: You know what kind of dog is? I need a
Speaker 5: little more detail than that. You know, can I get
Speaker 5: the guy out more than likely? Yes, that's that self confidence,
Speaker 5: but I need some details. And finally he gave me
Speaker 5: some details. I met up with him a couple weeks later,
Speaker 5: I think we met in Beirut and he told me
Speaker 5: he's over in Japan and this is what happened. So
Speaker 5: of course I got on the internet and started researching it,
Speaker 5: making some calls, and that's how I first found out.
Speaker 1: Now, when you meet these people over there, are you
Speaker 1: in and out of Are you in and out of
Speaker 1: Lebanon on a regular basis? No, but you just had contact.
Speaker 1: But I can go over there, yeah, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: and so. When you find that funny that your name
Speaker 1: is on the lips of every woman in the Middle
Speaker 1: East whose husband has been wrongly imprisoned in their mind
Speaker 1: or been kidnapped, I think that's really funny. Well, you
Speaker 1: know the guy that got my husband out of the
Speaker 1: box at the airport they were going to kidnap him
Speaker 1: is Mike Taylor. Mike Taylor. It's funny that you're.
Speaker 5: But to go to what happened before. When I was
Speaker 5: driving here from Boston, I was looked at the George
Speaker 5: Washington Bridge, and it was back in probably ninety two ish,
Speaker 5: where I was doing a vulnerability assessment for Port Authority
Speaker 5: of New York and New Jersey after the World Trade
Speaker 5: Center bombing. I was on top of the New Jersey
Speaker 5: support structure on top of the George Washington Bridge when
Speaker 5: I got a call from the FBI saying, hey, we
Speaker 5: need some help. We got an American child who was
Speaker 5: kidnapped taking the Bay route. Of course them all in
Speaker 5: give me details, feed me. He said, the mother is
Speaker 5: going to call you in a few minutes. The mother's
Speaker 5: in Cyprus. So we got involved. At the requests of
Speaker 5: the Bureau and the mother, we got the child back,
Speaker 5: an American citizen back here. We had them back in
Speaker 5: probably ten days so, and there were many stories like that.
Speaker 5: So that's that's what some of the history.
Speaker 1: That's why that.
Speaker 5: Lady happened to mention of my husband, you know, kidnapped
Speaker 5: the guy I'm calling it's Mike Taylor.
Speaker 1: After that dinner, what happens.
Speaker 5: I went over and met with him. He introduced me
Speaker 5: to Carol, Carlos's wife, and that's where I got, you know,
Speaker 5: the intel dumb. All the information came and they gave
Speaker 5: me all the details. And one of the things that
Speaker 5: really struck me and hit me in a heart hard
Speaker 5: about this was part of his bail condition was he's
Speaker 5: not allowed to talk to his wife.
Speaker 1: What I learned in the documentary that Japanese system was
Speaker 1: pretty brutal.
Speaker 5: I was shocked about that. I didn't think that the
Speaker 5: Japanese were that bad, and I've never heard anything like
Speaker 5: that before. Part of your bail, you can't talk to
Speaker 5: your wife, you can't see her, and you can't talk
Speaker 5: to her.
Speaker 1: Who does that?
Speaker 5: What civilized nation does that?
Speaker 1: So when you have prior knowledge of the way this
Speaker 1: is going to work, the box and this and the this,
Speaker 1: you're calling the shots, meaning I'm going to do this
Speaker 1: airport because I think this is the best opportunity for us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, first of all, there's not a lot of private
Speaker 5: planes that fly in and out of Japan, really, so
Speaker 5: it can't take him in out of Tokyo because he's
Speaker 5: too well known. He walks down the street and he'll
Speaker 5: have a whole bunch of people with him wanting to
Speaker 5: autograph and talk to him, so on and so forth.
Speaker 5: So we had to find another way out. So I
Speaker 5: looked at Osaka. Osaka had a new VIP terminal private
Speaker 5: airport that had just opened with the commercial airport. Private
Speaker 5: airport's on one side, commercials on the other. And I
Speaker 5: did the research on it and found out they only
Speaker 5: do security checks on the way in, nothing on the
Speaker 5: way out. You need to know your enemy, very very important.
Speaker 5: I need to know how the Japanese think. They're very robotic.
Speaker 5: Everything's sop, nothing's outside the lines. They don't have people
Speaker 5: like us. You know, you put one Japanese person there
Speaker 5: and tell him to lead something, he's going to be lost.
Speaker 5: You put ten of them together, they'll get anything done. Really,
Speaker 5: as long as they have all the same mission. Tell
Speaker 5: them what the mission is, they'll get it done. But
Speaker 5: you got to put parameters up for him. So I
Speaker 5: know they're not going to weigh the box. I know
Speaker 5: they're not going to do anything to the box. So
Speaker 5: the security is only checked on the way in, not
Speaker 5: the way out. And I made the box too big
Speaker 5: for their X ray machine anyway, so it won't go through. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and they seem to think which I got from. You know,
Speaker 5: I did this on purpose. But the prosecutor was telling
Speaker 5: me when he was trying to interview me that, you know,
Speaker 5: you said you were musicians. I said, that's absolutely not true.
Speaker 5: I never said we're musicians. You people thought we're musicians
Speaker 5: because there was a guitar case on top of the
Speaker 5: music box, so that's why. And he was pretty embarrassed
Speaker 5: about that. They get embarrassed about things like that.
Speaker 1: But did you what did you tell them? Did you
Speaker 1: tell them me you were like a film crew. No,
Speaker 1: the equipment is their anything.
Speaker 5: To tell the care Look, we're coming in on a
Speaker 5: private plane a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
Speaker 5: a leg to go there.
Speaker 1: I don't need to tell you anything. It's filled with
Speaker 1: suntry whiskey. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I knew based on studying them that they're only
Speaker 5: going to check the security in a way and not
Speaker 5: the way out.
Speaker 1: So what I did.
Speaker 5: I put some sub wolfers in the big box when
Speaker 5: they took it off the plane, so there was some
Speaker 5: weight in it. And then I had another smaller box
Speaker 5: about half that size that wouldn't fit in the cargo
Speaker 5: hole because it wasn't big enough, so we put it
Speaker 5: in a cabin. And then I had the guitar case.
Speaker 1: What was in the smaller box, nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: Now when you pull this off, when this happens, you
Speaker 1: get him into the plane, into the box, loaded the
Speaker 1: box of the plane, you take off. I'm assuming, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a relay here from Japan to Turkey,
Speaker 1: Turkey to Lebanon to beab Root. Do you accompany him
Speaker 1: the entire way, or you're done in Japan. The plane
Speaker 1: takes off and you deliver him door to door.
Speaker 5: I was on the plane right and in fact, the
Speaker 5: Japanese ground crew from the VIP terminal couldn't lift the box.
Speaker 5: So I had to help them lift the box from
Speaker 5: my hotel where I put him in the box, rolled
Speaker 5: them down in the elevator downstairs to the lobby. I
Speaker 5: had to have six Japanese on one side. I'm on
Speaker 5: the other side. Put him in the van. Then we
Speaker 5: got to the airport, which is only a ten minute ride,
Speaker 5: not even a ten minute ride. I have to help
Speaker 5: take him out. Then there's wheels they can roll it
Speaker 5: up to the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt they put
Speaker 5: it on there and the conveyor belts about three feet
Speaker 5: away from the cargo hole.
Speaker 1: The door of the cargo hole, there's a gap there and.
Speaker 5: I see it as I walk up, and I say,
Speaker 5: oh boy, that's a problem. There's a Japanese guy, he's
Speaker 5: maybe five foot tall, one hundred and twenty pounds inside
Speaker 5: the cargo hole trying to lift that one end.
Speaker 2: Of the box.
Speaker 1: I say, hey, buddy, step out.
Speaker 5: Let me go in there that jumps in big guys
Speaker 5: about six to one, two twenty. I said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: I don't need you hurt in your back.
Speaker 1: Get out of here. I'll do this.
Speaker 5: He got and I there's like six or seven Japanese
Speaker 5: on the back end pushing it up, and I yank
Speaker 5: it into the airplane into the cargo hole over the crack,
Speaker 5: over that three foot crack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was elect feet three feet yeah.
Speaker 5: And it was crooked too, it was. It wasn't at
Speaker 5: a straight angle. So we got it in no problem
Speaker 5: because the box was probably closer to four feet long,
Speaker 5: so we had some space there to play with. And
Speaker 5: I had a centimeter all around on the box shorter,
Speaker 5: smaller than the cargo hole. So I knew it fit
Speaker 5: because I knew what the dimension of the cargo hole was.
Speaker 1: What does have inside the box while he's being anywhere?
Speaker 5: Just no, we don't need any water. He's only there
Speaker 5: for about thirty or forty minutes.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really so I threw a bed sheet on him.
Speaker 1: And was he a good candidate for smuggling? Did he
Speaker 1: turn out to? It was very good? Made no sounds
Speaker 1: because he had a risk, he had a risk.
Speaker 5: You know, he's he's gonna die in Japan in a jail.
Speaker 5: They'll put him in there for fifteen twenty years. He
Speaker 5: ain't getting out. So he was a very good candidate
Speaker 5: for it, and he did a great job. He did
Speaker 5: exactly what I asked him to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you get him on the plane, you take off.
Speaker 1: How soon after the plane takes off, does go and
Speaker 1: get out of the box.
Speaker 5: Well, what happened was soon as we shut the door
Speaker 5: to the cargo hole, I had to pilot check it
Speaker 5: make sure that was right. They shut the passenger door,
Speaker 5: planes buttoned up, I opened the box and I tell
Speaker 5: him sit tight for a few minutes. When wheels up,
Speaker 5: i'll pull you out. And I take a big dish
Speaker 5: rag a bath towel from the bathroom because the cargo
Speaker 5: holes on the back of the airplane, then the bathroom
Speaker 5: and then the cabin area. So I take the bath
Speaker 5: towel from the bathroom and I set it in between
Speaker 5: the box lid and the box itself so there's more ventilation,
Speaker 5: and sit tight. We wheels up, I'll pull you out.
Speaker 5: So we got wheels up, which we were late. You know,
Speaker 5: I asked for an earlier departure at ten thirty. Of course,
Speaker 5: the Japanese very sop. Your original plan was eleven o'clock,
Speaker 5: you gotta wait till eleven. So it was eleven o'clock.
Speaker 5: We weren't allowed to take off until then, which we did.
Speaker 5: But I went back in and found him sitting on
Speaker 5: top of the box Indian style with a big smile
Speaker 5: on his face. Said okay, come on out. You can
Speaker 5: come into the main cabin now, and we had some
Speaker 5: champagne and gave him some salad, some food and eat
Speaker 5: before he was talking a mile a minute because he
Speaker 5: wasn't able to talk to the media. He wasn't able
Speaker 5: to he was talking to his wife on a back
Speaker 5: channel phone.
Speaker 1: No, no, no waiting for him. Yeah, so you go
Speaker 1: to the flight from Japan to Turkey as how long
Speaker 1: with ruffly nine hours? Not too bad. No, then you
Speaker 1: get off that plane and you go right away.
Speaker 5: So I did what I did, is I flew over
Speaker 5: a Russian airspace just in case we had a mechanical problem.
Speaker 5: I don't want to fly in another country because Russians
Speaker 5: we can do business with, so they won't grab them
Speaker 5: return them to Japan. So I made sure the flight
Speaker 5: pan was over Russian We landed in Istanbul Istanbul. The
Speaker 5: plane it so we land about four in the morning,
Speaker 5: draining dark.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 5: Perfect, that's just what we want. I have another plane,
Speaker 5: smaller plane on standby for him. Put him on a
Speaker 5: smaller plane. Off he goes into Bay Route. Me and
Speaker 5: my buddy, we go to the commercial airport, get our visas,
Speaker 5: go to the commercial airport and catch a commercial plane
Speaker 5: in I don't want to land in Beirut. Have our
Speaker 5: names together, because my name will draw attension and his
Speaker 5: name will draw attension, and they'll know right away.
Speaker 1: That's why I did that. And then where does he go?
Speaker 1: He went home?
Speaker 5: His wife met him at the airport, and of course
Speaker 5: they're u fork. That was on the thirtieth of January
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: And he ever paid it.
Speaker 5: No, he did pay some. I don't want to get
Speaker 5: into all the details, but he did pay some. But
Speaker 5: you know, for my legal fees afterwards, at a pocket
Speaker 5: expense was eight hundred and forty two thousand dollars. Lawyers
Speaker 5: are expensive, especially international camo. Yeah that but international case,
Speaker 5: and what are you gonna do? You have no choice?
Speaker 5: And I had some amazing lawyers, but we got traded
Speaker 5: by Trump. How so they cut a deal? Who did
Speaker 5: Trump and Shinzo Abi, the Prime Minister of Japan. We
Speaker 5: understand that it was done over you just radar deal.
Speaker 5: So many legal scholars still today say bill jump is
Speaker 5: not a crime in Japan. A lot of Americans don't
Speaker 5: realize that bill jumping is not a crime in Japan.
Speaker 5: And aiding and embedding somebody it's something. Who's jump bail
Speaker 5: is not a crime, is not a crime. So what
Speaker 5: they did they charged us with harboring, But nobody has
Speaker 5: ever been charged with harboring unless police are actively looking
Speaker 5: for him. Like you hit somebody in your house, or
Speaker 5: you hit somebody in the car when the police come
Speaker 5: and knock.
Speaker 1: On the door, that's harboring.
Speaker 5: So it's political and we got sold by Trump and Pompeo.
Speaker 5: That's the bottom line. So anytime Trump starts talking about, oh,
Speaker 5: I protect vets, that's all bullshit. He doesn't protect vets
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 1: But when you go, you are sent there to go
Speaker 1: on trial there. You're not tried in the United States
Speaker 1: or tried over there.
Speaker 5: We didn't go on trial because we don't want to
Speaker 5: wait three and a half years in solitary confinement to
Speaker 5: go to trial. I went right away, you know that.
Speaker 5: The night we got there, I said, look, I'm pleading guilty.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, we want to know everything. I'm not
Speaker 5: telling you everything, but I'm pleading guilty. What more do
Speaker 5: you want?
Speaker 1: And did they tell you? Did you we aware? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously if it's a bit of a dealing here that
Speaker 1: you were only going to do a year that was
Speaker 1: part of the agreement. No, that was never part of
Speaker 1: the agreement. What was the what term were you facing?
Speaker 1: Thirty six months and that's what you did? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: we did.
Speaker 5: First of all, we did ten months in a county
Speaker 5: jail waiting to go because they detained in Norfolk. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Norfolk County and Denham, Massachusetts. And then after that we
Speaker 5: get transferred. We said, look, we've exhausted all of our
Speaker 5: appellate issues and every court mechanism available. The judge Tilwane
Speaker 5: asked the state Department, can you give me a document,
Speaker 5: a sworn statements saying they won't be tortured the tailors
Speaker 5: won't be tortured if we send them to Japan. Of course,
Speaker 5: of course they gave them the sworn document, but they
Speaker 5: also know on the State Department's website. There's talk about
Speaker 5: Japanese prisons, torture and people the same website. So come on, guys,
Speaker 5: it's all bullshit.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't a fair question to ask you? Were
Speaker 1: you tortured?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course I was tortured absolutely for.
Speaker 1: What for what? Just just for retribution or they wanted
Speaker 1: information from you about.
Speaker 5: No no, no no, no no no no, just that's how
Speaker 5: they do. They were aliating, they were humiliating. I spent
Speaker 5: seventeen months in solitary confinement. Now, when I say solitary
Speaker 5: confinement in Japan, it's not like in the US where
Speaker 5: you get out for an hour a day. That door
Speaker 5: didn't open. You get people that you see three times
Speaker 5: a day, and that's a guard bringing your food. You
Speaker 5: don't speak to anybody.
Speaker 1: There's no speaking, nor no outdoor activity.
Speaker 5: Absolutely not. When I came back, I had to get
Speaker 5: vitamin D injections twice a week because my vitamin D
Speaker 5: was so bad.
Speaker 1: Former Green Beret Mike Taylor. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: tell a friend and be sort of follow here's the
Speaker 1: thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. When We Come Back, Mike Taylor describes the
Speaker 1: conditions of solitary confinement within the Japanese prison system. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Former
Speaker 1: CEO Carlos Gon was sprung from house arrest in Japan
Speaker 1: by the herculean efforts of former Special Forces soldier Mike Taylor.
Speaker 1: Yet while gone walks free, Mike Taylor and his son
Speaker 1: Peter served hard time in unimaginable conditions.
Speaker 5: I was sentenced with thirty months. He was sentenced with
Speaker 5: twenty four months.
Speaker 1: He got out after how long we got.
Speaker 5: Out at the same time time when we came back
Speaker 5: to the States. He got out quicker than me.
Speaker 1: And in this solitary confinement tableau that you've created, you
Speaker 1: never got to see your son once.
Speaker 5: So no, no, no, soon as you Japanese took custody
Speaker 5: of us, we didn't see each other. We weren't allowed
Speaker 5: to see each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had the tearing paper thing.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I had blisters on your fingers and I
Speaker 5: just kept doing it. And you can't lean against the wall.
Speaker 5: You're sleeping on the floor the whole time. There's no heat,
Speaker 5: so you get frost white every day during the winter
Speaker 5: time on your hands and your feet. You're not allowed
Speaker 5: to use a blanket until like nine at night. And summertime,
Speaker 5: it's just the opposite. People are, you know, dropping because
Speaker 5: of dehydration and you haven't suicides like every four days.
Speaker 5: There seventeen months in solitary confinement. That door did not
Speaker 5: open and I didn't have a shower for six and
Speaker 5: a half months. After six and a half months, they
Speaker 5: gave me a little bucket of water and said you
Speaker 5: can shower with this.
Speaker 1: It just sounds like unimaginable. But when you do get
Speaker 1: out and you're free, he hasn't paid you all the money,
Speaker 1: And I'm just I mean, obviously you're a man with
Speaker 1: a code and you have your honor and everything, and
Speaker 1: for me, I'm like, here, you save this guy's fucking life. Yeah.
Speaker 5: One of the things that's important that a lot of
Speaker 5: people don't know and gets miscommunicated is I'd never ask
Speaker 5: for money up front. This wasn't done for money. Do
Speaker 5: I want to be paid, absolutely, but that was never
Speaker 5: talked about beforehand. Carlos told his wife and told my son,
Speaker 5: your dad got me over the barrel right now. When
Speaker 5: he was in Japan. He can charge me twenty five
Speaker 5: million dollars and I have to pay it. Right to me,
Speaker 5: that was insulting because I told his wife, I said,
Speaker 5: shame on you, shame on him. I've never asked you
Speaker 5: for a dollar. The only money that we've taken was
Speaker 5: for expenses, and we had to make many trips back
Speaker 5: and forth to Japan and doing a lot of risks.
Speaker 1: Consider your legal fees further expenses.
Speaker 5: That was after the fact. I'm just talking operationally now.
Speaker 5: So I never asked you for any money. Could I
Speaker 5: have I said, yeah, I could have said, yeah, put
Speaker 5: twelve million up in escrow. Otherwise I'm not helping you.
Speaker 5: I didn't do that. I did it on being a
Speaker 5: good guy and being honorable.
Speaker 1: You thought it was right. Yeah, So when you get
Speaker 1: out in Japan, twenty months in the prison and frostbite
Speaker 1: and there's no showers and all of us insanity, what
Speaker 1: happens then, when's the first time you lads and your.
Speaker 5: Son, oh that was in the airport in Japan, were
Speaker 5: about to leave. Yeah, we were in the terminal in
Speaker 5: Japan and they brought him because he was in a
Speaker 5: different prison and I was in the so called the
Speaker 5: hard prison, which is great. If you got to do it,
Speaker 5: let's do it that way. But we got to Japan
Speaker 5: and then the guys from the Bureau of Prisons, there
Speaker 5: was three of them, Japanese, no Americans, from American Bureau
Speaker 5: of Prisons. They came over to escort us back. First
Speaker 5: of all, they told the Japanese they signed for us.
Speaker 5: They took all the change office because they had us
Speaker 5: chained up, like you know, Charles Manson, They took all
Speaker 5: the change off and says, you don't need any change.
Speaker 5: You guys are good to go. I said, can I
Speaker 5: see my son? He's absolutely. He brought Peter in and
Speaker 5: we got the hug and it was emotional and feel
Speaker 5: like it would be wow.
Speaker 1: Once you get transported by a Bureau of Prisons people
Speaker 1: from Japan to the United States, you're free from the
Speaker 1: Japanese facility and you go home. You didn't have to
Speaker 1: serve another day of time anywhere.
Speaker 5: They know what happened to us. We flew us back
Speaker 5: to Los Angeles to the federal holding place.
Speaker 1: You were there for how long?
Speaker 5: About three weeks? Peter got out within a couple of
Speaker 5: days because he only had a twenty four month sentence
Speaker 5: and the ten months, and he had already served twenty months.
Speaker 5: We both served twenty months in Japan, and we both
Speaker 5: served ten months in Detum, so he was already he
Speaker 5: served more than a sentence of twenty four months. He
Speaker 5: served thirty months.
Speaker 1: But when you get out, when you you were finally
Speaker 1: you go to the place in La it's kind of
Speaker 1: an eat intermediate place and then you get out and
Speaker 1: you're done. You never have to go into a facility, nothing,
Speaker 1: no court, no court rooms, trials, no violation alone in
Speaker 1: the US. And so you got out when what year
Speaker 1: that was?
Speaker 5: November twenty two?
Speaker 1: Tell me why one of the toughest men I fit
Speaker 1: from that? In my wife, you're in the vitamin water
Speaker 1: bis but happens. Let me tell you why.
Speaker 5: Vitamin one you get it on Amazon. It's a good
Speaker 5: healthy drink. In Iraq during the war, it's one hundred
Speaker 5: thirty hundred and forty degrees here every day and we're pounding,
Speaker 5: you know, twenty five thirty bottles of Gatorade and have
Speaker 5: all the sugar. Sugar's just cramping us up and just
Speaker 5: brutal on us. So we had to fly a couple
Speaker 5: of airplane loads of Pedia Light. In Pedia light tastes horrible,
Speaker 5: I mean terrible, terrible. Maybe it tastes a little bit
Speaker 5: better now, but it tastes terrible. So that's where I
Speaker 5: got the idea there's got to be something else out there.
Speaker 5: There wasn't, so that's where I created Vitamin One. It
Speaker 5: has no sugar, but it's got the electrolytes and the
Speaker 5: energy enhancing bikes going.
Speaker 1: It's still okay. It's tough.
Speaker 5: You know, Co Compepsia the big dogs on the block here.
Speaker 5: You know, our sales over in the Middle East are
Speaker 5: much better than here, but we sell here in Amazon.
Speaker 5: We're trying to get in a Costco Kroger the other
Speaker 5: stores we got. Arthur Demola's a market basket up in Massachusetts. Phenomenal,
Speaker 5: phenomenal supermarket chain. And what a great guy. He puts
Speaker 5: his money where his mouth is because he put is
Speaker 5: in every one of his stores. So we're in the
Speaker 5: full market basket chain thanks to Arthur Demolos.
Speaker 1: So you're over in Beyrout on business and is there
Speaker 1: any are you ever anywhere in proximity to go?
Speaker 5: And oh, I've seen him a couple of times.
Speaker 1: You've seen him? Oh yeah, you sat with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you met with him face to face, but we was
Speaker 1: it pleasant your interaction with him? It was very civil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: amazing you could sit down with this guy who you've
Speaker 1: saved his life to. Well, let me just say, I
Speaker 1: don't have many people on the show that I can
Speaker 1: save this you, but I'm not an honor to meet you.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Mike Taylor and director James Jones. This
Speaker 1: episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio.