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Speaker 1: It's the part of the second to Now that's not

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Speaker 1: how we should introduce a podcast. Welcome back to Behind

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Speaker 1: the Bastards. This is a podcast about terrible people. And

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Speaker 1: this is part two of our series on the Wonga Coup,

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Speaker 1: which started as an episode about a coup, but the

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Speaker 1: first part was really just a more general description about

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Speaker 1: the history of coups in Africa as both a literary

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Speaker 1: tradition and as a real attempted thing, ending with the

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Speaker 1: terrible story of the dictators of Equatorial Guinea. My guest

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Speaker 1: on part two, as with part one, is Bridget Todd.

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Speaker 1: I get that. I get the fake airhorns. I love it.

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Speaker 1: There's a national here. Yeah, sadly there's a national airhorn shortage,

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Speaker 1: so we were out of the real ones. But when

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Speaker 1: when those come back in stock, I will I will

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Speaker 1: force our editor to put them back in. Please do.

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Speaker 1: I I will only go on podcasts where I am

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Speaker 1: introduced the plot with airhorn, so please please do. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it should be illegal to introduce people any

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Speaker 1: other way, to be honest, Like, can you imagine if

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Speaker 1: that's how like like first dates always went, and just

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Speaker 1: like anytime you're out at the bar, you just randomly

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Speaker 1: hear you like because like two people are meeting on

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Speaker 1: tender or something. I love it. My people are Caribbeans,

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Speaker 1: so we love a good airhorn. Oh yeah, yeah you do.

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Speaker 1: I would really like some sort of sound effect to

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Speaker 1: let me know if it's like a cute meat or

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Speaker 1: if it's like this guy is or this person is horrifying,

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Speaker 1: Like I would like to know that. I would like

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Speaker 1: some sort of sound of what to happen. What would

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Speaker 1: be your horrifying sound effect for a for a date?

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Speaker 1: What's the what's the theme song of Hannity? I'm Sean

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Speaker 1: Hanny dy I eat man at Tease. I think that's it.

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that's that's basically it. Yeah, yeah, Bridget,

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Speaker 1: you are the host of a new podcast launching next

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Speaker 1: month h called There Are No Women on the Internet. Right,

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Speaker 1: that's true. Uh, it's not mostly true. It launches on

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Speaker 1: July seven, and it's called there Are No Girls on

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Speaker 1: the Internet. But you got the broad stroke? Oh wait,

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Speaker 1: June is after Okay, yep, sorry, well I got the

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Speaker 1: broad strokes. And speaking of broad strokes, let's get the

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Speaker 1: broad strokes of this coup, right, Um. Yeah, I'm a

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Speaker 1: master of transitions. Thank you. Uh. So, yeah, we we

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Speaker 1: ended our episode talking about the dictators of Equatorial Guinea

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Speaker 1: and this attempted coup that didn't turn into a coup

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Speaker 1: but did turn into a successful book, which is, Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't even know what level of privilege that is,

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Speaker 1: where you like attempt to overthrow a sovereign nation in

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Speaker 1: order to make a profit and fail but still get

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Speaker 1: rich off of the book. Like that's that's like I

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Speaker 1: feel like there's another level of white privilege that's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't even know how to describe that. That's like

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Speaker 1: platinum white privilege that it's like yeah, like yeah, that

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Speaker 1: is some like ultra uncut pure white privilege. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: the kind of white privilege you need the Costco card

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Speaker 1: to take advantage of, right, Like you gotta pay an

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Speaker 1: extra sixty five dollars. There's a yearly subscription that you

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Speaker 1: have to pay into for that. So yeah, so yes, um,

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Speaker 1: and now we're going to start So, so we're gonna

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Speaker 1: go back in time again. And now that we've explained

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Speaker 1: all of these coups and mercenaries in the situation in

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Speaker 1: Equatorial Guinea, we're going to go back in time, um

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Speaker 1: to talk about another mercenary before we get back to

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Speaker 1: Equatorial Guinea, and this mercenary's name is Simon Francis man

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Speaker 1: Uh Now Simon was born on June nineteen fifty two.

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Speaker 1: His family were British as all hell, I think they're

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Speaker 1: Irish British so like British people who became part or

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Speaker 1: Irish people who like did all enough to become part

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Speaker 1: of the British aristocracy and got to be a lot

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Speaker 1: less Irish as a result of things. Anyway, I don't

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Speaker 1: really know. Um. The man family wealth came from brewing,

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Speaker 1: and right around the same time Simon was born, his

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Speaker 1: family sold their family business to a big company in

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Speaker 1: return for a pile of cash and a seat on

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Speaker 1: the board. This meant that Simon grew up very comfortable,

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Speaker 1: but it also meant that he would need to find

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Speaker 1: a new career for himself when he grew up. Taking

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Speaker 1: over the family business would not be an option. In

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Speaker 1: the grand tradition of all fancy English people, his parents

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Speaker 1: sent him the funk Away to spend his childhood and Eaton,

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Speaker 1: which is frequently referred to as the nursery of England's

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Speaker 1: gentleman uh Eaton, is probably the most prestigious high school

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Speaker 1: on the planet. Boris Johnson went there, as did David Cameron,

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Speaker 1: Prince William, Prince Harry, Tom Hittleston, and in general about

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Speaker 1: thirty of all of the famous British men who have

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Speaker 1: ever lived like it eatens where you go if you're

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Speaker 1: a fancy British boy. Now this is like some like

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Speaker 1: very fancy British white guy shit. I feel yeah, yes,

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Speaker 1: this is like this is this is the peak of

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Speaker 1: fancy British white guy ship like it does it doesn't

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Speaker 1: get I would say the whitest thing it is possible

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Speaker 1: to be is a British person who went to Eaton.

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Speaker 1: Like that's that's like like top tier of of white dude.

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Speaker 1: Like very few of us are that white mm hmm. Now,

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Speaker 1: Eating currently cost fifty two dollars a year in tuition,

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Speaker 1: and the cost was broadly similar when Simon went there.

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Speaker 1: Only students from age thirteen to eighteen are accepted, and

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Speaker 1: the application process starts at age ten. Eating students each

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Speaker 1: get their own separate room. Students are split up into

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Speaker 1: fifty person houses where these boys are watched over by

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Speaker 1: a full time staff supervised by what a Business Insider

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Speaker 1: article I found calls a hired dame. Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't imagine having that on your resume. Yeah, I was

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Speaker 1: a hired dame for about four years in the nineteen nineties. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they also couldn't they couldn't just call it like

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Speaker 1: an r A like here, like familiar with It has

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Speaker 1: to be a hired dame. Poor people have r a's

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Speaker 1: bridget Rich people have hired dames. And I do think

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Speaker 1: like your r a's job is just to make sure

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Speaker 1: nobody burns the building down. Really like a hired dame.

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Speaker 1: They're doing a lot. More so, like she's managing this

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Speaker 1: whole staff of people who like adults, So all these

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Speaker 1: kids when the eighteen are living alone in little apartments

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Speaker 1: and having an entire staff of adults clean for them,

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Speaker 1: um clean their clothing, like, launder their clothing, cook food

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Speaker 1: for them, and like this woman whose job it is

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Speaker 1: to manage all of the people who manages their lives,

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Speaker 1: like it's this kind of imagine what that does for

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Speaker 1: you as a little kid growing up, Like it's yeah,

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Speaker 1: I feel like it would really fuck me up to

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Speaker 1: have an adult woman doing all this ship for me,

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Speaker 1: and I'm a little kid. I feel that there's no

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Speaker 1: way I can come out of that being well adjusted. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think that's probably the case with Etonians, as they're known.

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Speaker 1: So after rich Boy High school, Man joined the military

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Speaker 1: and went into officer training at the Royal Military Academy

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Speaker 1: at Sandhurst. In addition to being Brewers, the men and

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Speaker 1: his family had a long history of military service. Simon

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Speaker 1: graduated and followed in his father's footsteps by accepting a

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Speaker 1: commission in the Royal Scots Guards. He was good at soldiering,

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Speaker 1: and after a few years he applied to join the

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Speaker 1: Special Air Service, Britain's equivalent to the Navy Seals. He

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Speaker 1: eventually became a troop commander in the s A S

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Speaker 1: and specialized in counter terrorism and intelligence gathering. Both of

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Speaker 1: those specialties will become powerfully ironic as we go along,

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Speaker 1: but for now. Simon did his three year rotation and

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Speaker 1: then returned to the regular Army, where he was stationed

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Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland. He bounced around Cold War era Europe

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Speaker 1: in Central America until the early nineteen eighties, when he

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Speaker 1: grew bored of army life and retired. Man immediately moved

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Speaker 1: to the private military sector, joining a company run by

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Speaker 1: S A. S founder David Sterling, who was pretty close

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Speaker 1: to just being a straight up fascist. Uh. And in

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Speaker 1: general Old Man's friends during this period were members of

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Speaker 1: like a trend in British conservatism that started in the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies when the Labor Party won control of

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Speaker 1: the government and right wingers began ranting about communist infiltration.

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Speaker 1: In the early seventies, Sterling, his boss, had solicited volunteers

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Speaker 1: to join what he called a strike breaking army to

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Speaker 1: destroy the unions in Britain violently. Um. This put him

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Speaker 1: ideologically right in line with Margaret Thatcher's political mentor airy Neive,

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Speaker 1: who urged a right wing coup against the Labor government.

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Speaker 1: Oddly enough, this also put Sterling and his fellows right

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Speaker 1: in line with David Bowie, who openly supported an extreme

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Speaker 1: right wing government and stated in the early seventies that

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Speaker 1: Britain needed a dictator. Yeah, but you know that about

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Speaker 1: David Bowie, did you. Yeah, when like in the seventies,

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Speaker 1: when unions got super powerful in England and uh, the

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Speaker 1: Labor government started winning a bunch of David Bowie, an

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Speaker 1: extreme right wing government and a coup and a dictator. Uh.

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Speaker 1: You know this is like when you're presented with, like

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Speaker 1: when you know, the idea of a problematic saves, when

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Speaker 1: you're presented with some unfavorable information about somebody that you

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Speaker 1: love and you're like, I pretend I do not see it.

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Speaker 1: I feel like that's like I'm like, ohs it Sylvie

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Speaker 1: with your Lager's jersey. Of course. Exactly, yeah, exactly, yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, as much as we may try to be here,

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Speaker 1: we all have someone like that. I love what I

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Speaker 1: love Bill Shatner, and he's objectively a monster. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: the talk of coups on the British right wing mostly

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Speaker 1: died down in nineteen seventy nine when Margaret Thatcher was

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Speaker 1: elected Prime Minister, but Simon Mann's social circle in the

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Speaker 1: early eighties was made up almost exclusively of folks who

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Speaker 1: were unabashed supporters of violently suppressing the left. He worked

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Speaker 1: with David Sterling's company as a rent a mercenary and

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Speaker 1: hobnobbed with high society. But a desk job didn't suit Man,

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Speaker 1: and he was already getting restless by the time his boss,

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Speaker 1: Guy in trouble for misusing funds donated to this to

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Speaker 1: a charitable foundation. Lucky for him, by this point, Saddam

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Speaker 1: Hussein had invaded Kuwait and the British military was suddenly

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Speaker 1: involved in something interesting again. Man re enlisted and joined

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Speaker 1: British Army staff in Saudi Arabia. The war didn't last long,

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Speaker 1: and in its wake, Simon Mann was left more bored

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Speaker 1: and restless than ever. He got involved with an oil

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Speaker 1: firm that was investing in the newly emerged oil industry

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Speaker 1: in Angola, and as luck would have it, just as

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Speaker 1: Man started sniffing around Angola in nineteen ninety two, the

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Speaker 1: nation found itself in the midst of a civil war.

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Speaker 1: Now Angola's second largest political party, UNITA, had started out

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Speaker 1: as a left wing organization supported by the People's Republic

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Speaker 1: of China, but during the nineteen eighties UNITA had pivoted

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Speaker 1: to the hard right under the command of Jonas Savimbi.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to our old buddy Paul Manafort, it received piles

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Speaker 1: and piles of money and guns from the Reagan administration

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Speaker 1: during this period. In nineteen ninety two, UNITA troops overran

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Speaker 1: several oil pump thing of a jigs near a town

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Speaker 1: called Soyo. The Angolan army failed to retake the will field.

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Speaker 1: Now this was a threat to Man's investments in the area,

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Speaker 1: but more than that, it was an opportunity. He and

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Speaker 1: his business partner, an entrepreneur named Tony Buckingham, approached the

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Speaker 1: government of Angola and said, Hey, we're pretty sure we

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Speaker 1: could put together a mercenary army to take care of

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Speaker 1: this rebel problem for you, and Angola said, yes, it

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Speaker 1: really is that easy, or at least it was in

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Speaker 1: the early nineties too. Get your own army. Yeah, that's cool,

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Speaker 1: totally cool. Like, wouldn't it be cool if you could

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Speaker 1: just like a master or own army with that amount

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Speaker 1: of ease, welcome back come about. Yeah, I mean that's

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Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do with this whole fd A thing.

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Speaker 1: But um, it's it's it's harder than I thought to

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Speaker 1: amass your own army, to be honest, frustrating. What would

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Speaker 1: what would your the what would your army be called?

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I think I don't know. I I uh,

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Speaker 1: maybe you're right. Maybe that's why I haven't gotten an

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Speaker 1: army yet, is that I haven't figured out the branding

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Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, that's a shame. I'll have to think

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Speaker 1: about that. Bridget So the whole, the whole, Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: Simon Mann and his partner Buckingham got to follow in

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Speaker 1: the grand tradition established by Bob Dinnard in myke Cory.

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Speaker 1: Only unlike those men, they were helping to keep a

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Speaker 1: ruler in power and actually fighting against far right militants.

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Speaker 1: So you might call this a promising start, or at

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Speaker 1: least as promising a start as any mercenary outfit can have. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, broadly. Um. It doesn't end well, though, As

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Speaker 1: Adam Roberts notes, Quote Man, however, was a little different.

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Speaker 1: He was as likely to wear a crumpled business suit

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Speaker 1: as riomless spectacles and rimless spectacles as camouflage or chest webbing.

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Speaker 1: He was an early example of a new sort of mercenary,

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Speaker 1: the type familiar with company law, bank transfers, and investor agreements,

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Speaker 1: as with the workings of a browning pistol. In other words,

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Speaker 1: Simon Mann was probably the first example of a modern

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Speaker 1: mercenary leader, the prototype for men like Eric Prince so

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Speaker 1: before him. Mercenaries are like these, like really hard bitten people,

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Speaker 1: like guys who go to war in their youth and

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Speaker 1: never escape it, and like you know, like Bob Dinnard

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Speaker 1: in My Corey, like those those dudes saw heavy, heavy combat,

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Speaker 1: and it just like they were just fucked up in

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Speaker 1: a way that this was all they could do, and

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Speaker 1: all of their men were kind of the same way.

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Speaker 1: Simon Mann is someone who is perfectly capable of succeeding

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Speaker 1: in the non shooting people world, and in fact has

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Speaker 1: been very successful in that, but he likes the excitement

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Speaker 1: of war, so he's like he gets involved in this

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Speaker 1: mercenary company as a business um, and he's really the

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Speaker 1: first example of that. He's the Eric Prince type, right, um,

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Speaker 1: where he's a good he's good at running a corporation,

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Speaker 1: and he also just thinks it's cool to have an army. Um.

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Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of the sort of dude that

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Speaker 1: man is. And he blazes a trail. Yeah, I feel

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Speaker 1: like that's really a dangerous recipe, that kind of that

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Speaker 1: kind of dude who thinks it's it's cool to have

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Speaker 1: an army. Yeah. Yeah, because he's gonna use it. You know.

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Speaker 1: There's something to be said. Like Mike Horrer, as we

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Speaker 1: talked about, was a monster, like killed a ton of people,

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Speaker 1: super racist, but at least he got shot at a lot.

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Speaker 1: Like he and his men like they like he he

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Speaker 1: he didn't. He wasn't just like sitting in a boardroom

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Speaker 1: while people committed murder on his behalf like he was.

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Speaker 1: He was out there, and I guess that's something Simon

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Speaker 1: Mann is going to be the sits in a boardroom

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Speaker 1: while people get shot kind of leader. Um yeah, so yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was not really an adrenaline junkie um in the

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Speaker 1: in in the traditional way, Like he wasn't addicted to

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Speaker 1: like running into combat and getting shot at directly. He

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Speaker 1: was happy staying behind the lines and basically playing. Like

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Speaker 1: you get the feeling that running a mercenary army for

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Speaker 1: Simon Mann is like what a lot of people get

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Speaker 1: out of playing real time strategy video games. Like that's

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Speaker 1: kind of what he likes about it is it's like

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Speaker 1: the stakes and stuff. Um so yeah. He hires a

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Speaker 1: bunch of South African and British mercenaries to fill out

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Speaker 1: his army. These are white and mostly black men who

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Speaker 1: had worked in counter terrorism, which counter terrorism within the

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Speaker 1: South African context in this period meant that they had

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Speaker 1: been supporting the apartheid government of South Africa and fighting

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Speaker 1: against like Nelson Mandela and his crew. Um So, for

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Speaker 1: the sake of having a corporate structure and all the

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Speaker 1: legal permits necessary to buy guns and stuff. Man somehow

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Speaker 1: wound up in control of a private security firm called

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Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes. We'll talk about them a little bit later.

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Speaker 1: The bulk of his soldiers were veterans of the thirty

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Speaker 1: two Battalion, which is a veteran South African unit who

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Speaker 1: had fought in Angola before, and they've been fighting on

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Speaker 1: the same side as Jonas Savimbi then because the apartheid

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Speaker 1: government backed this far right militia. But since the apartheid

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Speaker 1: government had fallen, you know, they just wound up on

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Speaker 1: the other side, fighting against these guys that they fought

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Speaker 1: alongside before, which actually works out great because they know

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Speaker 1: all their tricks. Um thirty two Battalion had a reputation

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Speaker 1: for toughness and for viciousness. Their nickname was the Terrible Ones,

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Speaker 1: and in February of nineteen three they got a chance

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Speaker 1: to prove they deserve the name. Man's Little Army launched

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Speaker 1: an assault to retake the oil fields of Soil, supported

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Speaker 1: by the Angolan Air Force and army. The core of

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Speaker 1: their force was just twenty five men, but these were

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Speaker 1: hardened veterans, and they had the assault skills necessary to

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Speaker 1: act as the tip of the spear for the undisciplined

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Speaker 1: and largely amateur and Golan army. The Unita rebels were

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Speaker 1: forced to retreat and the end Goolan Army to established

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Speaker 1: a beachhead on the Soyu oil field. The success so

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Speaker 1: You earned Executive Outcomes a reputation for ferocity and competence.

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Speaker 1: The England government offered Man an eighty million dollar contract

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Speaker 1: if his firm would help them continue the war against

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Speaker 1: Unita and train the regular Angolan army. More battles followed,

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Speaker 1: and Executive Outcomes expanded into a much larger force, eventually

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Speaker 1: reaching more than a thousand regular employees, and Goalie even

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Speaker 1: let Man help run their air force. In nineteen nine four,

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Speaker 1: they carried out what Man claimed was the largest combined

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Speaker 1: arms attack in Africa since World War Two, forcing UNITA

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Speaker 1: out of the Soyu oil fields entirely. So he it

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Speaker 1: seems like it's working out so far. Uh in The

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Speaker 1: mid nineties were in general probably a pretty happy time

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Speaker 1: for Simon Mann. He expanded his little army into a

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Speaker 1: medium sized army, complete with planes and helicopters. From nine

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Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety six. They fought numerous battles in Angola

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Speaker 1: and other African countries. Twenty one Executive Outcomes men were

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Speaker 1: killed in various clashes, but they racked up a much

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Speaker 1: higher death toll among the rebels they fought. Unita was

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Speaker 1: largely funded by diamond mines, and Man's contract specified that

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Speaker 1: he got a cut of any diamond mine freed by

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Speaker 1: his men. So this is really interesting because it leads

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Speaker 1: to they don't just get like a percentage of the profits.

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Speaker 1: Executive outcomes like as part of like a web of companies,

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Speaker 1: and it's almost impossible. I don't think anyone has ever

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Speaker 1: really done a good job of unraveling all of them.

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Speaker 1: But Simon Mann and his business partners create like multiple

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Speaker 1: different companies, including a mining company that they have actually

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Speaker 1: like they get a contract to run these diamond mines

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Speaker 1: that they liberate with their soldiers, and then the mining

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Speaker 1: company that Simon Man owned starts mining the diamonds, so

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Speaker 1: they get money from the diamond mining. UM. He creates

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Speaker 1: a subsidiary called branch in g which does a lot

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Speaker 1: of the oil extractions. And this is where things start

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Speaker 1: to get really fucking complicated. UM and In fact, things

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Speaker 1: have been complicated from the beginning because at this point

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Speaker 1: in Africa, all of these different fucking mercenary companies and

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Speaker 1: mining companies are all like like it's it's it's shady

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Speaker 1: fucking corporate ship. Like where you you'll have like twenty

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Speaker 1: different companies that are all really the same company run

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Speaker 1: by the same three or four guides, but they're different

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Speaker 1: companies on paper. Um. So, like Executive Outcomes had started

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Speaker 1: as a front company for a South African war criminals

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Speaker 1: that he could evade international arms embargoes. And I don't

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Speaker 1: really know how Man wound up running it, but like

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Speaker 1: Man wound up basically using this as like the face

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Speaker 1: for his company, even though like the real company actually

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Speaker 1: doing most of the fighting for Executive Outcomes was another

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Speaker 1: company Man had founded called Sandline. Like it's all fucking

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Speaker 1: stupidly complicated. Um And to make matters even more complicated,

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Speaker 1: a bunch of other shady companies that we all know

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Speaker 1: and love were involved to for so, for example, that

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Speaker 1: big first deal that Executive Outcomes brokeren with Angola to

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Speaker 1: have their their their fucking mercenary army liberate those diamond minds.

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Speaker 1: It was brokered by de beers, so like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we all know to beers. Yeah, this is like tail

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Speaker 1: as old as time when it comes to fucking like

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Speaker 1: rich gas companies, like shell companies, you know, it's like

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Speaker 1: this is tales all the time, like companies where it's

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Speaker 1: all like, oh, these different companies with like crazy names

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Speaker 1: and it's all one company, but they were actually like

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Speaker 1: five companies. All you need to know is that, like

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Speaker 1: somebody is getting fucking paid and shady shit is happening, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: All you really need to know about this in particular

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Speaker 1: is that like Simon Mann and a handful of his

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Speaker 1: friends at the top, who are all white dudes, are

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Speaker 1: getting paid millions of dollars and all of the fighting

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Speaker 1: and dying is being done by mercenaries sixty or seventy

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Speaker 1: percent of whom are black guys. Um, And they're not

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Speaker 1: getting paid so much like it's good money for them.

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Speaker 1: It ain't Simon Man money, um, because the real moneys

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Speaker 1: and the diamonds in the oil um. The mercenaries are

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Speaker 1: just a way to get at the diamonds in the

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Speaker 1: oil um. Yeah, and you'll hear a lot of like

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Speaker 1: libertarian types talk about how good a job Executive Outcomes

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Speaker 1: did here um, and they did a great job at

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Speaker 1: fighting Unita, but they didn't really care about stabilizing Angola.

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Speaker 1: They cared about stabilizing the mines and oil fields of

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Speaker 1: Angola and the roads that lad those two distribution centers UM,

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Speaker 1: which is why they didn't actually achieve any long term

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Speaker 1: security for the region. UM. So yeah, by nine, Executive

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Speaker 1: Outcomes was effectively a giant web of companies, all more

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Speaker 1: or less run by Simon Mann and his buddy Buckingham,

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Speaker 1: with interest in mining, oil, security, air transport, and everything imaginable.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen the government of Sierra Leone went to Executive

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Speaker 1: Outcomes begging for their help and suppressing a brutal insurgent

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Speaker 1: group called the RUF. Now, the RUF had been formed

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Speaker 1: by a disaffected army corporal and they basically gone from

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Speaker 1: fringe political armed group to violent psychopaths. Their trademark tactic

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Speaker 1: was severing the arms of their victims. Depending on how

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Speaker 1: pissed they were, ore UF men would either give short

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Speaker 1: sleeves where they amputated just the hand, or long sleeves

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Speaker 1: where they took the whole arm. So yeah, these guys

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Speaker 1: are bad uh and they're kicking the ship out of

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Speaker 1: the government to Sierra Leone, and a big part of

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Speaker 1: why is that they're receiving money in arms from Liberian

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Speaker 1: President Charles Taylor. And so in short order, Sierra Leone

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Speaker 1: is near collapse and Executive Outcomes gets hired. They come

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Speaker 1: in and they effectively changed that. They pushed the rebels

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Speaker 1: back and focus heavily on retaking diamond minds the RUF

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Speaker 1: had occupied. This was a decent tactic, but it was

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Speaker 1: also very profitable. The Sierra Leonese government had awarded a

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Speaker 1: lucrative diamond mining contract to Branch Energy, a subsidiary of

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Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes UM, and the Executive Outcomes war against the

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Speaker 1: r u F went well enough that in nineties seven

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Speaker 1: seven ninety seven, Sierra Leone was able to hold elections. Now,

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Speaker 1: the story that comes next is really complicated. The story

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Speaker 1: the site you usually here is like again kind of

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Speaker 1: the libertarian mercenaries are good story, which is that like

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Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes comes in, they stabilize Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone

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Speaker 1: has their first independent elections that are like decent, and

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Speaker 1: then the I m F and the UN pressure the

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Speaker 1: new president to sign a peace deal with the r

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Speaker 1: UF that includes them forcing out executive outcomes. And as

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Speaker 1: soon as that happens, the r u F goes on

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Speaker 1: the offensive again and the co countries drawn into war.

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Speaker 1: And if you know, these mercenaries have been allowed to

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Speaker 1: keep doing their job, Sierra Leone would have stayed peaceful.

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Speaker 1: And it's the fault of the the u N and

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Speaker 1: the i m F. There's certainly blamed for the u

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Speaker 1: N and the i m F in here, but also

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Speaker 1: documents that have been released more recently show that the

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Speaker 1: President of the United States actually pressured or sorry that

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Speaker 1: the president of Sierra Leone went to UH, the United

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Speaker 1: States and was like, I want to kick these mercenaries

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Speaker 1: out because I don't think they're good for the country.

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Speaker 1: Will you demand that I kick them out so that

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Speaker 1: I have an excuse to say that I've like that,

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Speaker 1: like the international communities forcing me to force these guys out.

428
00:22:58,920 --> 00:23:02,640
Speaker 1: It's actually much more complicated than people who just want

429
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 1: to make this into a pro mercenary story want to see. Um, yeah,

430
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:09,600
Speaker 1: it's fucking it's it's a whole mess. This this, this

431
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 1: whole story is a mess. And if it was true

432
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:15,320
Speaker 1: that like mercenaries were good, and if they've been allowed

433
00:23:15,320 --> 00:23:18,360
Speaker 1: to do their thing, Sierra Leone would have stayed in peace. Um.

434
00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:21,720
Speaker 1: Then Sierra Leone probably wouldn't have had a civil war

435
00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:24,359
Speaker 1: that lasted for years, because mercenaries continued to be a

436
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: part of the fighting in Sierra Leone for the entirety

437
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 1: of the nineties and into the early two thousands. And

438
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:33,120
Speaker 1: in fact, the government of Sierra Leone, after kicking Executive

439
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:37,199
Speaker 1: Outcomes out, hired Sandline International, which was a subsidiary of

440
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,480
Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes, to back the Nigerian Army and its peacekeeping there.

441
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 1: And things were still bloody for years. So it's just

442
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:45,040
Speaker 1: like a big fucking stupid mess. But the point of

443
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 1: the matter is that mercenaries were good at capturing minds

444
00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:52,199
Speaker 1: um and fighting rebels. They were not good at actually

445
00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 1: developing a stable society in any of the countries in

446
00:23:54,760 --> 00:23:58,719
Speaker 1: which they were active UM and Yeah. In spite of

447
00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:01,680
Speaker 1: their protestations that they to bring peace to Africa, Executive

448
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:03,680
Speaker 1: Outcomes made the bulk of its money by getting poor

449
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 1: countries to sign over mining rights to branch energy UM. Yeah.

450
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:11,359
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, Sandline International breached a u N

451
00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:14,439
Speaker 1: embargo on weapons sales to see ear leone. The company

452
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: also got in trouble in Papua New Guinea UM and

453
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:20,879
Speaker 1: Man was flown out of the country under shady circumstances

454
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 1: for trying to help them put down a rebellion. It's

455
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:27,199
Speaker 1: just a whole fucking complicated, messy story. Now. The end

456
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 1: of it is that by nineteen ninety eight, Africa was

457
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:33,919
Speaker 1: filled with countless competing mercenary firms and nearly all of

458
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:37,160
Speaker 1: them were either based in South Africa or mainly employed

459
00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:42,200
Speaker 1: South African soldiers UM. And the Mandela administration got really

460
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:44,240
Speaker 1: fucking angry at this and was like, all you guys

461
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 1: are doing is perpetuating violence and all these countries and

462
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:51,920
Speaker 1: like adding fuel to the fire and making a shipload

463
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 1: of money for yourselves. Fuck this. So in nineteen South

464
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 1: Africa passes the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which makes it

465
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:01,439
Speaker 1: illegal for South Africa is to offer military aid to

466
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 1: foreign country companies. And this means that in nine executive

467
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:08,080
Speaker 1: outcomes goes out of business um because they can't really

468
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:11,159
Speaker 1: operate anymore. So South Africa shuts a lot of this

469
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: stuff down very effectively. So that's good, Yeah, it is good.

470
00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: One thing I want to say is can we just

471
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 1: I know this sounds kind of silly. Can we talk

472
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:25,880
Speaker 1: about the name executive outcomes? There are more? Is there

473
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,920
Speaker 1: a more? Sort of like it's not clear what we do,

474
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 1: but you like, no one involves somebody getting rich and

475
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 1: fucking shady business dealings name than executives outcomes. Yeah, executive outcomes. Yeah.

476
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:40,439
Speaker 1: It it is like the name you would give a

477
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: mercenary company in like a Paul Verhoeven movie. Like that's

478
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: what it's like, a RoboCop sounding fucking name. Yeah, it is.

479
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: It totally is yeah, yeah, yeah, and they are out

480
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,679
Speaker 1: of business by and again this is heralded as a

481
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 1: tragic thing by a lot of folks. Um. I have

482
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 1: somewhat different opinions. Um, but yeah, it is a complicated

483
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 1: as hell story. And the fact that like there's all

484
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: these companies that are on paper even sometimes like competing

485
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:09,719
Speaker 1: with each other, but also a lot of them are

486
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: owned by the same people. It's a big fucking mess.

487
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 1: But you know what's not a mess, Bridget tell me

488
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:17,600
Speaker 1: what's not a mess? The products and services that support

489
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: this podcast. Oh, I want to hear all about them.

490
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: Is there some avenue where I can do that? No,

491
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 1: just just kidding that Avenue is now all right, we're

492
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:39,880
Speaker 1: back bridget So, yeah, that's executive outcomes. They're they're they're

493
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: gone in Man in Buckingham sell off their interests in

494
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:46,359
Speaker 1: most of their subsidiary companies and they get they're both

495
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 1: super fucking rich. We don't know how rich Man gets.

496
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: He claims Buckingham made a lot more money. Buckingham went

497
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:53,399
Speaker 1: up with something like a hundred and fifty millions. Simon

498
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 1: Mann did very well for himself though. They're both millionaires,

499
00:26:56,440 --> 00:27:02,320
Speaker 1: and he was already rich. So yeah, good ship um. Now.

500
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:06,479
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, the men who actually did the fighting for

501
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,560
Speaker 1: his companies did not get rich. Most of executive outcome

502
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: soldiers were black men, veterans of thirty two Battalion or

503
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: Nigerian Special Forces. Many of them were left destitute when

504
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 1: the company folded, forced to take on menial work as

505
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 1: security guards and live in Squalor in northwest South Africa.

506
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: They had not benefited from the network of mining companies

507
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: and airlines that filled Man's pockets for the better part

508
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: of a decade. Simon, though got to retire, he competed

509
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:33,000
Speaker 1: in car races, married a much younger woman, and had

510
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: several kids. He should have been happy, but retirement didn't

511
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 1: suit Simon Mann, one of his friends, later recalled, I've

512
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: never seen anyone looks so bored. Man's fiftieth birthday came

513
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 1: and went. He tried to make peace with the fact

514
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: that his exciting youth as a war profiteer was behind him,

515
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 1: but he just couldn't do it. It's a sad story.

516
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:59,120
Speaker 1: It is sad. You know, lots of money, younger wife,

517
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:02,480
Speaker 1: how sad? I mean, you know, I feel bad for

518
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: the guy. Yeah, I mean he has a lot of

519
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 1: things that you might consider hallmarks of success, but he

520
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: doesn't get to profit off of a war. He doesn't

521
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: get to order men into battle anymore. Well, this is

522
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:16,679
Speaker 1: like what you were saying, is like how much of

523
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 1: the bad ship that men do is out of kind

524
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:23,199
Speaker 1: of boredom or just like wanting to like mix it

525
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 1: up and have a little fun. And like, you know,

526
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: I do think that that, like evil is definitely part

527
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 1: of it, But I do think another part of it

528
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: is like just like wanting to do something that is

529
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: exciting and kind of fun, even if it kills people

530
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: and like fox up their lives kind of especially if

531
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 1: it kills people and their lives, because then there's stick bonus.

532
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 1: Yeah again, this is why turning Florida into just a

533
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: walled off, open air war zone is such a good

534
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:54,160
Speaker 1: business idea. I think, and look, nobody has to wear

535
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 1: masks there. It's it's what's fine. That's COVID nineteen is

536
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: gonna be at least your problem in war Uh yeah, Warida.

537
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 1: You've already got a name, You've got a Brandon. I

538
00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 1: think I think we gotta do this. I thinks it's

539
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: the fast track. We gotta get this. I bet Governor

540
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: de Santis could get on board with this, you know

541
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: so um. In two thousand three, this aging former mercenary

542
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: board and in need of a challenge, had a fateful

543
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: meeting with a fellow named Eli Khalil, a Lebanese businessman

544
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 1: and financier with strong ties to the oil and gas industry.

545
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 1: Now Khalil's eyes had recently turned towards Equatorial Guinea. He

546
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: couldn't help but notice that Exon was paying the nation's dictator,

547
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:40,640
Speaker 1: Oh Bong just three dollars a barrel, while nearby Nigeria

548
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: got eight dollars a barrel for their field. A savvier

549
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: head of state could negotiate much better terms, opening up

550
00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money to flow into the coffers of

551
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,959
Speaker 1: a guy like Eli Khalil. He started talking to folks

552
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: members of Parliament in the House of Lords who might

553
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:58,160
Speaker 1: be interested in funding such a venture. In January two

554
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 1: thousand three, he talked to sign and Man for the

555
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 1: first time. The two met in London and their talk

556
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: quickly turned to Equatorial Guinea. Now Man knew nothing about

557
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 1: the country, but Khalil told him he was friends with

558
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: an exiled Guinea and politician, Severo Moto Nasa. Now Moto

559
00:30:13,920 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 1: had been a mid level politician and Equatorial Guinea and

560
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:19,000
Speaker 1: had fled for his life to avoid being murdered by

561
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: the dictator oh Biong. He'd wound up in Madrid, where

562
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 1: he'd charmed the Spanish Prime Minister and collected a small

563
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 1: circle of exiled fellow Guineas to him. Moto had become

564
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: the most vocal opponent of Obiang's regime, and Eli Khalil

565
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 1: later admitted to providing him with modest financial support to

566
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:37,960
Speaker 1: make his exile comfortable. Now we are talking about very

567
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: powerful men and very serious crimes here, and I cannot

568
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,959
Speaker 1: tell you precisely what happened next. A lot of this

569
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: is just like, this is the likeliest way things happened,

570
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: because nobody who actually knows is talking, or if they're talking,

571
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,760
Speaker 1: they're lying, because again they're talking about overthrowing a government

572
00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 1: and violating international arms embargoes. So again, all of this

573
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: is kind of me putting together from research I've done.

574
00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: In the research, primarily Adam Roberts did like what seems

575
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 1: like the likeliest chain of events that actually occurred, And

576
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 1: from what I've read, it seems like Eli Halil, basically

577
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: on behalf of himself and other rich guys, found this

578
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: mercenary who was bored and started just talking to him

579
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: about all the terrible things this dictator Obian was doing

580
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:23,960
Speaker 1: to his people, and also how weak the military there was,

581
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 1: and how they had this wonderful exiled opposition leader would

582
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: be a great leader in Obion in stead and kind

583
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: of let man put two and two together in his

584
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: own head, like, yeah, you just sort of like lay

585
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: out the bones of the crime, but don't suggest the crime.

586
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 1: And then this guy Simon Man is like, what if

587
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 1: we overthrew him? And Eli Halila is like, that's a

588
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: great idea, Simon, that is like how rich guy cry.

589
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 1: How it happens like where it's like you suggest it

590
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 1: to someone who like you suggest it and then they

591
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 1: think it's their idea. That is like t's oldest time

592
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 1: when it comes to like rich guy crime. If you've

593
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 1: seen Tiger King, you know what the I'm talking about.

594
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 1: That is how it goes down. Yeah, that this is

595
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: this is like not like a rare story in history.

596
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 1: So um yeah. Uh. In his career as a mercenary,

597
00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: Man had always worked before for nations. He'd never gotten

598
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: involved in the kind of skullduggery that men like Mad

599
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: Mike Corey got famous for doing. But he'd grown up

600
00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 1: reading the same kind of books as Mad Mike. I'm

601
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 1: I'm sure he read King Solomon's mind, being a British

602
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 1: child of that era. Uh, And he'd come into adulthood

603
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:35,239
Speaker 1: hearing the stories of mercenaries like Cory and Denard. The

604
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:38,960
Speaker 1: idea of sailing into some horribly oppressed little African country,

605
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: installing his own chosen king and making a big pile

606
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 1: of lute was deeply appealing to Man, so he started

607
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: to do his own research, and of course he came

608
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 1: across horror stories of Obiang's cannibalism and all the terrible

609
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: things that he'd done, and he also learned that the

610
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,160
Speaker 1: leader was sick with cancer. This all convinced him that

611
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 1: to fly to Spain and meet with Moto, just to

612
00:32:57,480 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: see what he thought of the man. The two had

613
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: a couple of conversations and eventually Motto asked Simon, straight up,

614
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 1: will you help me take power in Equatorial Guinea. Man

615
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: later recalled that this was the moment he realized he

616
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 1: was getting involved with a serious game. So Man began

617
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: reaching out to his old friends, including Greg Wales, who

618
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: had worked as a an accountant for executive outcomes, and

619
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: they did enough research to learn that Obiang's army was small,

620
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: usually drunk, and easy pickings for an elite team of

621
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: veteran fighters. In recent interviews, Wales too refers to the

622
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 1: attempted coup as a game and starts states his belief

623
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: that the government of Spain supported from the beginning. And again,

624
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: all of like the white guys behind this, It's very

625
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 1: common for them to talk about like this is a game, um,

626
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 1: because I think that's really how a lot of them

627
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:44,240
Speaker 1: see it, Like they want to get rich off of this.

628
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 1: But they also it just it's it's a game. Um. Yeah.

629
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: And you know it's not a game though for the

630
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:54,440
Speaker 1: Spanish government. They want Equatorial guineas oil um. And you

631
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:56,000
Speaker 1: get the feeling that you just kind of pissed that

632
00:33:56,040 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: they decolonized the country before they knew it had incredibly

633
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: rich oil fields. Um. So there's a lot of talk

634
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 1: about the fact that a Spanish oil and gas company

635
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: would have been given access to Equatorial guineas rich fields.

636
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 1: And if this is true, it means that the Spanish

637
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:12,799
Speaker 1: government got involved as a way to stealthily recolonized part

638
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: of Equatorial Guinea. So Simon Mann began collecting soldiers, starting

639
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 1: with a handful of trustworthy white veterans. They tended to

640
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: be executive outcomes men. One of them, Style had flown

641
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 1: from man in Angola. He transitioned to a peaceful and

642
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:29,719
Speaker 1: lucrative career as the private pilot for a billionaire. So

643
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:31,759
Speaker 1: Style is and again he's a white guy. He's doing

644
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 1: incredibly well. He's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

645
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,160
Speaker 1: He's like getting to live in luxury hotels and party

646
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: with a billionaire all the time. He doesn't need the money.

647
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: But his old friend comes out to him and says, hey,

648
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 1: do you want to fly a bunch of men into

649
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:48,759
Speaker 1: battle to help overthrow this dictator? And style is like

650
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: fuck yeah, and he's like fun, yeah, because it sounds fun.

651
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: Like that's the reason he gives is that it sounds

652
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:57,840
Speaker 1: like it'll be a neat time. Um. Yeah, this is

653
00:34:57,880 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about like like people who do shitty

654
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: things when they don't need the money, they just like

655
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 1: are kind of reckless and like are up for up

656
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 1: for like a good time. Do you know. It's like

657
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,640
Speaker 1: it's like you didn't need to do this, but you're

658
00:35:11,719 --> 00:35:15,760
Speaker 1: just like kind of a reckless person and you were bored. Yeah, yeah,

659
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: and that's why you did it. As another mercenary who

660
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:21,400
Speaker 1: was approached to the job told the author of the

661
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:23,400
Speaker 1: book the Wonga Cou quote, you can see why this

662
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: is tempting. It's fun, it could work. You trust the leaders.

663
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:28,440
Speaker 1: Some of the guys did it for the kicks because

664
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: life is boring. Wow, exactly. At least they're at least

665
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:35,240
Speaker 1: they're open about it. Where it's like like this boring,

666
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:41,440
Speaker 1: they're very open about it. Yeah, it's it's awesome. Actually,

667
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: I mean no, it's not it's horrible but interesting. Yeah.

668
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: So the bulk of the men who were recruited by

669
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: man Um, the guys who were like the cannon fodder

670
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 1: for this operation, were of course Black soldiers. Buffalo soldiers

671
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 1: is the term you'll hear for these guys, the veterans

672
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: of the thirty two Battalion in South Africa. And these

673
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:01,919
Speaker 1: men's stories were saturday. They were not doing it for fun.

674
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:04,839
Speaker 1: Most of them lived in a place called Pomfrey, which

675
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: had been the military base they'd been bunked in when

676
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 1: they'd been in the South African military and was now

677
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: when old asbestos filled slum that they lived in with

678
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:17,320
Speaker 1: their families in horrific squalor Adam Roberts rights quote. Families

679
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 1: told of husbands and fathers who scrabbled at the chance

680
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:22,319
Speaker 1: of well paid work, no questions asked. At one house,

681
00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 1: a wooden carving on the wall shows a lion eating

682
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:28,280
Speaker 1: a man with a gun. Cecilia Chimoisha says that her father, Edwardo,

683
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: fought as a buffalo soldier for the South Africans for

684
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: nearly two decades. He received a small army pension and

685
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: took a job as a security garden Pretoria, leaving his

686
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 1: family behind because there's no jobs in Pomfrey. Pomfrey is

687
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: only full of humans, there's no jobs. He was working

688
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,640
Speaker 1: in Pretoria, his contract had finished, and he came home

689
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 1: for Christmas and New Year. When he returned to Practoria,

690
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,080
Speaker 1: he met a guy at an association for people who

691
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:51,800
Speaker 1: were in Battalion thirty two, a hostel. Then he phoned

692
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: us and said that he was going to Congo, And

693
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: most of the accounts of the black men, who again

694
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 1: are the majority of the fighting for it here, are

695
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 1: the same. There offered jobs that paid more than their

696
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 1: current work and offer maybe the possibility of an escape

697
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: from poverty while still being a pittance of what Eli

698
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 1: Khalil and Simon Mann planned to make in the operation quote.

699
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:16,959
Speaker 1: Friends recruited each other, cousins urged relatives to join, hoping

700
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: to bring more wages into the family. The signs of

701
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:21,960
Speaker 1: misery and palm frey, broken windows, sandy Street strewn with

702
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 1: litter all help explain the readiness of men to border

703
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:27,360
Speaker 1: plane for an ill defined military job. Many of the

704
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 1: foot soldiers and their families later claimed ignorance of the

705
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: coup plot. Perhaps they were not told, at least not

706
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: early on. And there's a good chance that most of

707
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:36,720
Speaker 1: these men, up until like the day they were supposed

708
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: to carry out this coup, didn't really know what they

709
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: were being brought in for. Um. So recruiting these black soldiers,

710
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:46,279
Speaker 1: who were again expected to do almost all of the

711
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:49,080
Speaker 1: fighting and killing, was basically an after thought thought for

712
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:52,280
Speaker 1: Simon Mann. He devoted most of his pre coup efforts

713
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:55,319
Speaker 1: to recruiting rich white guys to provide funding for the

714
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:58,040
Speaker 1: whole escapade. He did this by throwing a series of

715
00:37:58,080 --> 00:38:01,800
Speaker 1: fancy parties that is Johannesburg home. According to an attendee

716
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 1: at one of these parties, interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph, quote,

717
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:07,479
Speaker 1: it was a casual conversation at a drinks party around

718
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: a swimming pool about a security project in an African mind. Yeah,

719
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: First of all, I love this accent you're doing, and

720
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: I say that. Um. Also, this sounds terrible and they

721
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: did terrible things. This Johannesburg pool party sounds kind of lit.

722
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:28,359
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna yeah, I I have. I have gone

723
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 1: drinking at parties that are heavily mercenary, attended a couple

724
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: of times, and you drink a lot. Yeah, yeah, you

725
00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 1: drink a lot with private military contractors. Although the drunkest

726
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 1: people at the party were the U n UM. They

727
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,680
Speaker 1: actually like fucking parked illegally and we were going to

728
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:47,640
Speaker 1: get the party busted and we had to like find

729
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: the drunken U n guys and steal their keys to

730
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:53,319
Speaker 1: move the land rover. It was fucking night. Wait, why

731
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 1: is this not a podcast episode? You're doing story? It's

732
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: a fun tale. You are you got up? We got

733
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: you can get up to some ship in Iraq? Yeah

734
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 1: so um yeah. So he hosts these these pool parties

735
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:11,239
Speaker 1: where he talks to people. They're just having drinks and

736
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, we're having a project to mine.

737
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 1: You know, it'll be a quick profit if you're willing

738
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 1: to invest some money. And then, you know, most people are,

739
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as he mentions that the project

740
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 1: is an equatorial guinea, most reasonable people are like, oh fun, No,

741
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:26,960
Speaker 1: I have no interest in getting involved in business in

742
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 1: that company, Like it's way in that country, it's way

743
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: too unstable. Um. But the people who are interested. Man

744
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:36,080
Speaker 1: then has like private one on one conversations with Um

745
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: and he asked him to put up a hundred thousand

746
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: dollars in seed money and promises them a million dollar

747
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:46,320
Speaker 1: return inside of ten weeks. Now, I'm not an investment guru,

748
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: but I know some people who are good at investments,

749
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 1: and one thing they'll all say is that if anyone

750
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 1: is offering you returns like that really returns an excess

751
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:59,800
Speaker 1: of like five, ten, maybe fifteen percent, um, Like, that's good.

752
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:04,840
Speaker 1: If someone's offering you ten times return in ten weeks,

753
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:07,720
Speaker 1: that's a scam. They're either going to steal your money

754
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 1: or they're committing some sort of horrible crime. And this

755
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:15,200
Speaker 1: is the horrible crime type thing, right Like, somebody either

756
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: either somebody is getting scammed or there's a terrible fucking

757
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:21,719
Speaker 1: like a legal thing going on. For sure, it's either

758
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 1: heroin or a coup, right Like, if they're not just

759
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: going to take your money and run, it's heroin or

760
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:32,240
Speaker 1: a coup. Yeah. So, um, a number of people invested,

761
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: but a much larger number wound up spreading rumors around

762
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:37,840
Speaker 1: town about the coup that man was planning. Because again,

763
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 1: he tries to stay secret about this, but he's bad

764
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:42,960
Speaker 1: at it, and he just starts like telling anyone who says, yeah,

765
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 1: I might invest money, like yes, we're gonna overthrow this government.

766
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 1: So like he's simultaneously these black soldiers that they're expecting

767
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: to do the fighting don't know what they're getting involved in.

768
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 1: And like every random white dude that Simon man gets

769
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: drunk at here's about his plan to overthrow the government

770
00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:03,360
Speaker 1: of Equatorial Guinea. Like it so funny, Like this actually

771
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: reminds me of when we were at that when we

772
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: were talking about like Nazis, how I was so surprised

773
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:11,479
Speaker 1: by how many of them had. Like we're taken down

774
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 1: by personal messiness that you think you would be some

775
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:19,520
Speaker 1: like a dictator or like someone who is committed to

776
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 1: threading awfulness and like shittiness in the world, and then

777
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: you get taken down by your own messiness. It's like again,

778
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,480
Speaker 1: like you got drunk and told everybody like that that

779
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:32,360
Speaker 1: really tells you all you need to know. Don't you

780
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:36,279
Speaker 1: think that that is what separates the bad people who

781
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:39,719
Speaker 1: are terrible but ultimately just foot soldiers, to the really

782
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:42,080
Speaker 1: danger The really dangerous people are people like Eli Khalil,

783
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: like the guy at the top of all this who

784
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: was smart enough to be like this Simon guy is

785
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:49,360
Speaker 1: going to try to do this, and he's going to

786
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:52,560
Speaker 1: be incompetent and messy. But as long as I like

787
00:41:52,840 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: steer clear just enough that I can't be legally tied

788
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: to him, this might work out. If it does, I

789
00:41:58,160 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: make a bunch of money. If it doesn't, I'm out,

790
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 1: what you know, a hundred grand or two. He's the

791
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:04,880
Speaker 1: one gathering most of the funds anyway, Like, those are

792
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:06,759
Speaker 1: the people you have to fucking watch out for. Is

793
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,279
Speaker 1: that you like Halil's like the Simon Man's funk up

794
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: a bunch of ship, but they're usually too dumb to

795
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 1: get most of what they want because they're just they're

796
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:20,319
Speaker 1: they're messy. Yeah, Samon Man is messy. Listen, if you're

797
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 1: gonna be if you're gonna be involved in like like

798
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: dirty ship, don't get drunk and tell everybody that's Like

799
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:28,879
Speaker 1: that's like a number one rule. Yeah, Like, if you're

800
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:31,440
Speaker 1: gonna be a dealer, don't smoke your own stash. And

801
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: if you're going to plot coup's stay sober until the

802
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:37,319
Speaker 1: coup's done. That's what fucking Bob Denard did, right, They

803
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 1: brought the champagne. They didn't drink the champagne before the coup.

804
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 1: Mike Corean is men did and they got into an

805
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:47,319
Speaker 1: airport gunfight. Drinking getting wasted before the coup means an

806
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: airport gunfight. Getting wasted after the coup means a fun evening.

807
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:55,719
Speaker 1: Like it's not hard. I almost I almost feel like

808
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:59,919
Speaker 1: you're like giving people the recipe, like launch a successful coup,

809
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:04,120
Speaker 1: get drunk after those Venezuelan guys who got busted, they

810
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:06,600
Speaker 1: were on a boat, you know, they were getting drunk

811
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 1: on that boat, like, yeah, fucking idiots. And of course

812
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:13,439
Speaker 1: it was like most of the actual dying was done

813
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:15,560
Speaker 1: by like these local Venezuelans who just wanted to be

814
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:18,320
Speaker 1: freed by a shitty dictator. These white guys wanted to

815
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 1: be heroes. It's fucking bullshit. It's so frustrating. I don't know,

816
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: maybe they'll suffer real penalties for what they did, because

817
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 1: funk those guys, Uh, Like, it's so such bullshit. It's

818
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,880
Speaker 1: always such bullshit. So man was not secretive about what

819
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: he was proposing to do. Obviously, he slipped up constantly

820
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 1: in the drinking parties. Um. And you know, while a

821
00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: small number of people invested, a much larger number of

822
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:43,760
Speaker 1: the people that he talked to wound up just spreading

823
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:46,760
Speaker 1: rumors around town that Simon Mann was planning a coup.

824
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:50,319
Speaker 1: South African intelligence found out about it almost instantly and

825
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:52,840
Speaker 1: wrote out multiple different reports about the Button coup in

826
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,320
Speaker 1: the months before it was attempted. So like South African

827
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:59,200
Speaker 1: authorities like right away know what's going on. Um Now,

828
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,240
Speaker 1: it's like really that Simon Mann himself was well aware

829
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 1: that the gist of his plan was known to local authorities,

830
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: and he doesn't seem to have cared much. There's debate

831
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:09,759
Speaker 1: as to why, but the likeliest explanation is that he

832
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:12,279
Speaker 1: just didn't think anyone would bother to stop him. He

833
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: thought that Obiang was such a bad dictator and international

834
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:19,239
Speaker 1: law was so lax that nothing would happen um. And

835
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: he had good reason to think this. Um. His partner Wales,

836
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:25,319
Speaker 1: had reached out to an American lobbyist, Joe Sala, who

837
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: advised them that a four day program of introductions to

838
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 1: US officials could be arranged for Motto, the guy they

839
00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: wanted to put in place as the new dictator, for

840
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,399
Speaker 1: just forty grand And we don't know exactly what kind

841
00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:38,719
Speaker 1: of deal Whales worked out with Sala for Motto, but

842
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,840
Speaker 1: the two talked regularly for months and when man purchased

843
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:45,400
Speaker 1: a former Coastguard Boeing seven for the United States to

844
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:47,840
Speaker 1: use in his coup. The whole process of buying this

845
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: former military aircraft and shipping it to South Africa went

846
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:55,799
Speaker 1: really smoothly, like weirdly smoothly, and there are there's no

847
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 1: hard evidence, but there's a lot of people who think

848
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:01,439
Speaker 1: that someone, if not a US government at the top level,

849
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: people in the US government knew about this button coup

850
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:06,919
Speaker 1: and wanted to kind of help it along a little

851
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 1: bit by letting them get access to this plane more easily. Again,

852
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that people at the top did

853
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 1: know that. George Bush was like, yeah, funk it, let's

854
00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:19,080
Speaker 1: see what happens. Who knows. Yeah, I honestly wouldn't put

855
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: it past him, like that does sound like something he

856
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: would do and what it also might have been due

857
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: to the Spanish government asking the US government to help

858
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 1: things out here because Spain again had a massive financial

859
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 1: interest in this. The Spanish government did because they wanted

860
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 1: to get access to Equatorial Guineas oil, and Spain had

861
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: backed the U S and the invasion of Iraq, which

862
00:45:38,200 --> 00:45:40,920
Speaker 1: was like the Spanish leadership had backed the U S

863
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,080
Speaker 1: and the invasion of Iraq, which is a very politically

864
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: dicey decision, to say the least, and there's suspicions that

865
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:48,600
Speaker 1: basically the Prime Minister of Spain was like, look, George

866
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:50,839
Speaker 1: w Bush, like, when you wanted to go to war,

867
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 1: we helped you out. Now I want to overthrow a

868
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:56,359
Speaker 1: dictator and take some oil, Like let's get some quid

869
00:45:56,360 --> 00:46:00,360
Speaker 1: pro quo going up in this bitch. Um. So you

870
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: know you can't I can't say enough. This is two

871
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:10,320
Speaker 1: thousand three and two thousand four, like yeah, so um.

872
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,440
Speaker 1: Wales was responsible for also putting together most of the

873
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: non military aspects of the scheme. He set the day

874
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: of the actual event for a Thursday or a Friday,

875
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: because those were the days that most ministers would be

876
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:24,920
Speaker 1: in the capital in Malabo and Equatorial Guinea. The coup

877
00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:27,719
Speaker 1: plotters would then have the weekend to consolidate their power

878
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 1: and reopen the country on Monday. So that's kind of

879
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 1: the was the goal is, like we overthrow the government

880
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 1: on Friday, we like work through the weekend, and then

881
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 1: by Monday we got the whole new country set up.

882
00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:41,479
Speaker 1: I mean, I like the way they think it seems

883
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: it sounds very efficient and that within the way the plan.

884
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, yeah, that makes sense. That scans um. So

885
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 1: he had plans to get the National press such as

886
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,280
Speaker 1: it was in line and put together and quote impressive

887
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: plans for social, political, medical, and economic improvements for the

888
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,320
Speaker 1: general populace um that he was going to have motto

889
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:02,440
Speaker 1: announced on the monday he took power. Now, none of

890
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:05,239
Speaker 1: these plans would actually be implemented, but that would get

891
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:07,279
Speaker 1: like just talking about it would get the world off

892
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:10,480
Speaker 1: of their backs long enough to suck Equatorial Guinea dry.

893
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from the book the Wonga Coup. Quote.

894
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 1: By the turn of the year Wales, his ideas and

895
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,880
Speaker 1: presumably Man's, had expanded to something grander and Equatorial Guinea.

896
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:22,440
Speaker 1: He proposed forming a company controlled by Man and his

897
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:25,279
Speaker 1: closest plotters to run Equatorial Guinea, with Moto as a

898
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,040
Speaker 1: puppet leader. The English accountant had long liked to dream

899
00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:30,760
Speaker 1: up plans and models for how to run failing countries.

900
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:33,280
Speaker 1: He says he has written other proposals for other companies

901
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: modeled on the old buccaneering firms that underwrote British imperial

902
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: expansion in India and Africa. He thinks Somalia and Gabon

903
00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:42,880
Speaker 1: should be run by boards of directors, not by governments

904
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 1: or warlords. So he wrote a lengthy document, the Bite

905
00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: of Benin Company Document, describing how such men such a

906
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:52,360
Speaker 1: company could take power and run the oil rich West

907
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 1: African state. John Smith believed the document shows how the

908
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:58,640
Speaker 1: coup plot was pure neo colonialism. To put Motto in

909
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:00,880
Speaker 1: place so they can remove him in any time. Simon

910
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: would have been the president's security advisor and his company,

911
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:07,919
Speaker 1: the Bite of Benin Company, would have controlled it all. So, yeah,

912
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:13,600
Speaker 1: that's the plan. That's suck up. It's super fucked up. Yeah,

913
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:16,600
Speaker 1: it's real bad. You shouldn't do that, shouldn't shouldn't do

914
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: that at all. By the way, the name the Wonga

915
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:20,799
Speaker 1: coup comes from a letter that I believe it was

916
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:24,200
Speaker 1: Mark Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher's son um was one of the

917
00:48:24,239 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 1: backers of this plan, and he got He got in

918
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:29,920
Speaker 1: legal trouble for it eventually, and again the exact dimensions

919
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 1: to which he was involved aren't known. It kind of

920
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 1: looks like he just gave them some money, knowing vaguely

921
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:35,520
Speaker 1: that they were going to funk up some ship in

922
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: Africa and maybe make a lot of money. Um, but yeah,

923
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:42,120
Speaker 1: so Margaret Thatcher's kid like h Simon Mann writes him

924
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:44,440
Speaker 1: a letter when he needs more money and refers to

925
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:46,759
Speaker 1: the money that he needs as wonga, which is like

926
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:52,279
Speaker 1: upper classs rich British kids slang for cash. Um like

927
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 1: it's what Etonian boys called cat like some wonga? What

928
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:59,840
Speaker 1: of the wonga? Whatever? Fucking bullshit, fancy rich British kid stupid.

929
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 1: I hope that you do. I hope that you do

930
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 1: your like rich British kid accent A hundred more times

931
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:10,480
Speaker 1: in this episode. Very happy. I'll do my best. Can

932
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 1: you do that voice to call to an ad Brick?

933
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:21,360
Speaker 1: Just won? Oh? God? Alright, alright, speaking of colonialism and wonga,

934
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 1: speaking of wonga. He'll get this show somewhere. I went

935
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:28,280
Speaker 1: Australian right away, like I immediately, like Beard in Australian territory.

936
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:30,799
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say anything, but it's very Australian.

937
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:34,439
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, I know. I could

938
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 1: do a pretty good Irish accent. Yeah I do what Irish?

939
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:41,640
Speaker 1: That's a Irish boy faith? And why don't you check

940
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: out these odds? Now? Give this man a raise? Good?

941
00:49:48,920 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: That was so good not even please HOI you toy

942
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 1: t tidy Tom. We're back from the odd brick. It's

943
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 1: the Irish behind the Bostard's episode that really is, like,

944
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: I guess that's I don't know what kind of colonialism

945
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 1: it is when you try to make fun of rich

946
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 1: British people but you're bad at the accent, so you

947
00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:17,960
Speaker 1: just make fun of another colonialized oppressed people, the Irish. Instead.

948
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 1: You're like, I wanted to make fun of them, but

949
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 1: now the Irish are getting pulled into it somehow. I

950
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm so sorry Ireland. Um, you didn't deserve that.

951
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:32,280
Speaker 1: You're a wonderful country. So the Bite of Bening company

952
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,440
Speaker 1: document shows the plotters fretting that oil firms may not

953
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 1: play ball after the coup. They were worried that, like, um,

954
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: basically that some of these international companies would be like,

955
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:44,799
Speaker 1: you illegally overthrew a government and maybe we don't want

956
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:47,319
Speaker 1: to do business with you, which is weird because it

957
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 1: means that these coup plotters had way more faith in

958
00:50:50,080 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: the morality of oil company executives than anyone on earth

959
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:58,520
Speaker 1: ever has. Um. Yeah, so, uh, they were worried about

960
00:50:58,520 --> 00:51:01,040
Speaker 1: this because if oil revenue stopped flowing. You know, there

961
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: was no point in taking control of Equatorial Guinea, which

962
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 1: again shows that they did not care about overthrowing this dictator.

963
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 1: But they knew that there were regular direct flights between

964
00:51:09,640 --> 00:51:12,440
Speaker 1: Malabo and Houston, UM because you know, there was a

965
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 1: lot of American interest in Equatorial Guinea. UM, and they

966
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:19,040
Speaker 1: didn't want to like piss off the United States because

967
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 1: if they messed with the oil interests at all and

968
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:23,800
Speaker 1: like damaged the business interests of any of these companies

969
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 1: actively mining Equatorial Guinea, that would get the Marines in.

970
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: Like that was like literally like the writing they wrote,

971
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:31,480
Speaker 1: like this is what gets the Marines in. UM. So

972
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:34,279
Speaker 1: they had to assure the American government early on, and

973
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: that was something they like wrote into their plan. UM.

974
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 1: They figured that like the best way to do this

975
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:42,759
Speaker 1: was to offer lucrative jobs to American private security firms UM.

976
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 1: And they decided that like one way to do this

977
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 1: was to offer the Military Professional Resources Incorporated mpr I

978
00:51:49,160 --> 00:51:51,560
Speaker 1: company the job of guarding the new president once the

979
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: government was overthrown. So they like are immediately thinking, how

980
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:56,839
Speaker 1: do we bribe the US into not stopping us from

981
00:51:56,920 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: doing this? UM. Yeah, the bite have been in company.

982
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 1: Document is proof positive against any claims that humanitarian concerns

983
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 1: were a factor in the coup. Under its strictures, the

984
00:52:06,160 --> 00:52:08,719
Speaker 1: coup plotters would have total control over the new president's

985
00:52:08,719 --> 00:52:11,480
Speaker 1: schedule and what contracts he was allowed to sign. The

986
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:13,880
Speaker 1: plotters were well aware of the fact that Equatorial guineas

987
00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:16,799
Speaker 1: first dictator Macias had initially been a figurehead for the

988
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,760
Speaker 1: Spanish government. They would not allow this to happen again.

989
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: The document itself notes, quote, the two most potent general

990
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:27,320
Speaker 1: threats are one. As it is potentially a very lucrative game,

991
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 1: we should expect bad behavior, disloyalty, rampant individual greed, a

992
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 1: rational behavior, kids in toy shop style, backstabbing, bum fucking,

993
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:39,319
Speaker 1: and similar ungentlemanly activities too. If the result is not

994
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:41,480
Speaker 1: seen by the outside world is noticeably better than the

995
00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 1: current situation, our position there and uh in anything other

996
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:46,600
Speaker 1: than the very short term will be hard to sustain,

997
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:48,680
Speaker 1: and our involvement will be more likely to be the

998
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:54,759
Speaker 1: subject of unfavorable scrutinty. So that's really the wording on

999
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 1: this is fascinating to me, Like because there's so number

1000
00:52:57,920 --> 00:52:59,479
Speaker 1: one they call it a game again, but also because

1001
00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 1: there's gonna be so much money at stake, we should

1002
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 1: expect everyone to act badly, Like we have to assume

1003
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: everyone's going to be a piece of ship that's involved

1004
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: in this plan that we're cooking up. Yeah, everyone's going

1005
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: to act like a child at a toy store. And

1006
00:53:11,040 --> 00:53:13,719
Speaker 1: then also for I do think referring to it as

1007
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 1: a game, it really shows you, like what they were

1008
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:21,560
Speaker 1: thinking that they like don't understand this sort of steaks. Yeah,

1009
00:53:21,600 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: they don't. And it's is like this is StarCraft for

1010
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:26,800
Speaker 1: rich people, Like that's what this is. Is like that, Yeah,

1011
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:31,840
Speaker 1: it's it's fucking wild. So the biggest issue facing the

1012
00:53:31,840 --> 00:53:35,040
Speaker 1: plotters was the problem of acquiring weaponry UM and a

1013
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 1: lot is said stereotypically about how easy it is to

1014
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 1: acquire guns in Africa, but that's actually not as true

1015
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:43,320
Speaker 1: as people think. For one thing, there's fewer firearms and

1016
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: the entire African continent than in the United States, probably

1017
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:49,640
Speaker 1: a lot fewer, because the US has roughly half of

1018
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:53,000
Speaker 1: all the world's guns. UM in South Africa, probably the

1019
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:56,120
Speaker 1: most heavily armed nation on the continent, roughly ten out

1020
00:53:56,160 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: of one hundred people own a gun. In the United States,

1021
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:02,120
Speaker 1: there are one dred sixteen firearms for every human being.

1022
00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:05,720
Speaker 1: That's just private guns too. By the way, UM, Now,

1023
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 1: there are places in Africa where you can buy an

1024
00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:10,319
Speaker 1: a K forty seven for cheap, generally places that have

1025
00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: just finished having civil wars or coups or whatever. But

1026
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 1: that's not the case everywhere, and just being able to

1027
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:17,120
Speaker 1: buy an a K forty seven doesn't mean you can

1028
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:20,440
Speaker 1: actually get access to high quality arms. Coup plotters needed

1029
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:24,000
Speaker 1: not just random street a ks. They needed good, reliable guns,

1030
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 1: and they needed things other than a K forty sevens.

1031
00:54:26,480 --> 00:54:29,920
Speaker 1: They needed hand grenades, heavy machine guns, mortars, mortar ammunition,

1032
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: and rocket launchers. All of this ship is necessary if

1033
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: you're going to overthrow even a small modern government. Um

1034
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:38,239
Speaker 1: and that stuff is hard to fucking get, especially in

1035
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:41,360
Speaker 1: the quantities that you need. Man eventually worked at a

1036
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: deal with an arms manufacturer, Zimbabwe Defense Industries z d I. Now,

1037
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 1: he had no end user certificate, which is what you

1038
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 1: need to arm a large group of people without breaking

1039
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: international law, but he did have bribe money. Z d

1040
00:54:54,280 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: I didn't want to just deliver weapons to Man in

1041
00:54:56,200 --> 00:54:58,360
Speaker 1: his army in their own country though, because they legally

1042
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:00,759
Speaker 1: couldn't ship them to him going to handle all these

1043
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 1: logistical hurdles. Man and the other plotters set up an

1044
00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 1: incredibly complex and stupid scheme. The short of it is

1045
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:09,440
Speaker 1: that they bought a bunch of extra guns from z

1046
00:55:09,560 --> 00:55:11,640
Speaker 1: d I to have delivered for rebels that they knew

1047
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:14,080
Speaker 1: in the Congo, and they were going to have these

1048
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 1: rebels attack and take an air strip from the government

1049
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:19,400
Speaker 1: of the Congo. The z d I plane would then

1050
00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:22,239
Speaker 1: fly into the Congo, land at that air strip and

1051
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 1: unload a bunch of guns to pay the rebels and

1052
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:27,439
Speaker 1: to give Man's army, which they would then fly into

1053
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:31,000
Speaker 1: Zambia to give to their fighters. So like, we're already

1054
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:34,680
Speaker 1: over complicating things, right, like every every other complication is

1055
00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 1: that is another way for things to fail. Like this

1056
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:41,040
Speaker 1: is like we haven't even like the steps before we

1057
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:44,680
Speaker 1: even land an army in fucking Eduatorial Guinea are such

1058
00:55:44,680 --> 00:55:49,400
Speaker 1: a fucking mess. It's clearly a bad idea. So Man's

1059
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:51,919
Speaker 1: forward team would meet with these rebels and then fly

1060
00:55:52,040 --> 00:55:54,480
Speaker 1: to Zambia, where the bulk of the mercenaries would be waiting.

1061
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:56,719
Speaker 1: They'd load up their arms and then fly to Equatorial

1062
00:55:56,719 --> 00:55:59,239
Speaker 1: Guinea to carry out their coup. A separate group of

1063
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:02,960
Speaker 1: mercenaries arding future present Moto would land by boats supported

1064
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 1: by a small squadron of Spanish frigates, which would be

1065
00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:09,799
Speaker 1: there to secure naval supremacy. Now in war, as in life,

1066
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:13,000
Speaker 1: simple plans are always better than complicated ones, and Man's

1067
00:56:13,040 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 1: convoluted coup scheme collapsed before it really got started. The

1068
00:56:16,360 --> 00:56:19,759
Speaker 1: Congolese rebels failed to capture the airstrip and probably never

1069
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:22,400
Speaker 1: even tried to assault it. The z d I plane

1070
00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: had no place to land, so it flew back to Harare.

1071
00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:27,440
Speaker 1: The Spanish frigates sailed off when it became clear that

1072
00:56:27,520 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 1: no coup was going to occur, and in general, the

1073
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 1: whole scheme diet fizzled. And in fact, even the plane

1074
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:35,799
Speaker 1: that the Man's advanced team flew from the Congo to

1075
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:38,879
Speaker 1: Zambia like it hit a bird in midflight and had

1076
00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:43,880
Speaker 1: to be emergency repaired. It just it falls apart fucking immediately,

1077
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:46,800
Speaker 1: and most of Man's army just spends the whek getting

1078
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:50,880
Speaker 1: drunk in fancy hotels. Um. So, not not a great

1079
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 1: first try, not a great first try. But is it

1080
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:58,200
Speaker 1: fun to get drunk in fancy hotels? It is? It

1081
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: is uh and a lot of of the guys who

1082
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:02,319
Speaker 1: were getting drunk in those hotels would go on too

1083
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: wish that they just stayed in the hotels getting drunk. Um. Yeah,

1084
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:07,960
Speaker 1: imagine if that's all they did where they were just like, oh,

1085
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:10,160
Speaker 1: I just I just went to this hotel, got drunk,

1086
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 1: and then I like stayed there. I'm at home. Cous

1087
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:19,640
Speaker 1: are awesome. So after this inauspicious cluster fox, several of

1088
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: the coup's early backers backed out, wisely, deciding that Man

1089
00:57:23,120 --> 00:57:25,640
Speaker 1: and his fellow mercenaries were a lot worse at overthrowing

1090
00:57:25,640 --> 00:57:28,240
Speaker 1: corrupt regimes than they'd been at propping them up. But

1091
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:31,000
Speaker 1: Simon Mann had the coup plotting equivalent of blue balls,

1092
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 1: and he was not the kind of man who was

1093
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:35,320
Speaker 1: gonna let a little thing like rank failures stop him.

1094
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:38,440
Speaker 1: He committed to trying again and started pounding the ground

1095
00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:41,000
Speaker 1: in search of yet more funding. This was not an

1096
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:44,000
Speaker 1: easy process, and in interviews Man's friends noted that he

1097
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:48,440
Speaker 1: was visibly uneasy by late February two thousand four. Quote

1098
00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: he looked under huge emotional pressure, recalls one who saw

1099
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:55,080
Speaker 1: him regularly. Matters were not helped by Amanda, his free

1100
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:57,880
Speaker 1: spending wife. On one occasion, he lost it. He threw

1101
00:57:57,920 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 1: the phone ten ms at a wall and it smashed

1102
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:02,680
Speaker 1: to a thousand bits to somebody who worked in his office.

1103
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:05,320
Speaker 1: The reason, on top of the stress of finding cash

1104
00:58:05,360 --> 00:58:07,320
Speaker 1: for his coup, he had to provide ever more dollars

1105
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:09,960
Speaker 1: to his wife. Man could afford it in the longer term,

1106
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 1: but he lacked ready cash. His wife and children used

1107
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: to luxury were running up bills just as he needed

1108
00:58:15,360 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: every dollar. And it's it's a whole another level of

1109
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 1: self absorbed when you're angry at your wife and kids

1110
00:58:22,200 --> 00:58:24,920
Speaker 1: for spending money not because you don't have it, because

1111
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:27,560
Speaker 1: you need it to overthrow a sovereign nation to steal

1112
00:58:27,560 --> 00:58:31,240
Speaker 1: it's oil. It's like, baby, don't you understand I need this.

1113
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:33,480
Speaker 1: I need this money for the coup. I need this

1114
00:58:33,560 --> 00:58:37,400
Speaker 1: for the coup. That's my coup bucks. She's like you,

1115
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:41,800
Speaker 1: I'm getting a facial Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like

1116
00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:45,240
Speaker 1: like normal like middle class guys who are the kind

1117
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 1: of man Simon man is when they get old, like

1118
00:58:48,040 --> 00:58:51,840
Speaker 1: spend too much money buying like a shitty convertible, Simon

1119
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:55,439
Speaker 1: launches a coup. That's really what is going on here. Yeah,

1120
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:58,400
Speaker 1: It's like, are you gonna buy a like midlife crisis

1121
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:01,880
Speaker 1: car or execute a Q whichever yeah one of the two.

1122
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:07,160
Speaker 1: So um yeah he uh. He starts to get desperate,

1123
00:59:07,240 --> 00:59:10,960
Speaker 1: right um, because he's having trouble raising enough money, and

1124
00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:14,840
Speaker 1: like all desperate men, he cuts corners. And the fact

1125
00:59:14,840 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: that he was cutting corners in his attempted a second

1126
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:20,120
Speaker 1: attempted a coup is embodied nowhere better than the story

1127
00:59:20,120 --> 00:59:22,760
Speaker 1: of how Man planned to collect his zimbabwe and weapons

1128
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: the second time around. Rather than set up a drop

1129
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:28,440
Speaker 1: in another country, he just decided to fly his seven

1130
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: seven loaded with mercenaries into Zimbabwe and pick up the

1131
00:59:31,880 --> 00:59:35,200
Speaker 1: guns there. Now, these guns were being bought illegally, and

1132
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:39,000
Speaker 1: the mercenaries were also illegal. Um so. This introduced a

1133
00:59:39,080 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 1: number of wrinkles into the plan. Now Man and his

1134
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:44,720
Speaker 1: soldiers were going to be landing in another sovereign nation

1135
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 1: and buying illegal weapons, which is a whole new list

1136
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: of people you have to bribe. Like smuggling an army

1137
00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: all the way across Africa is not an easy thing

1138
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:58,400
Speaker 1: to do, um so, but Man decides, fuck it, we'll

1139
00:59:58,440 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 1: figure it out. On Arch fourth, a small advanced team

1140
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,520
Speaker 1: flew into Equatorial guineas Capital. Their role would be to

1141
01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:07,720
Speaker 1: set things up for when the full army arrived. Unfortunately

1142
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:09,960
Speaker 1: for them, Obiang and his government were well aware of

1143
01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:12,400
Speaker 1: what was about to happen. For one thing, the South

1144
01:00:12,400 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: African government had warned them in detail that Simon Mann

1145
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:18,280
Speaker 1: was planning a coup. For another thing, before the first

1146
01:00:18,320 --> 01:00:21,720
Speaker 1: coup attempt, Man had sent an advanced team into Equatorial Guinea.

1147
01:00:21,840 --> 01:00:24,480
Speaker 1: They've gotten drunk in one of the capital's few restaurants

1148
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:27,240
Speaker 1: and talked openly about their plans to overthrow the government.

1149
01:00:27,320 --> 01:00:30,720
Speaker 1: So there's a number of reasons that Obiang knows what's

1150
01:00:30,720 --> 01:00:35,960
Speaker 1: about to happen again, like getting drunk, and like getting

1151
01:00:36,040 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 1: drunken talkie if you're if you're planning a coup, If

1152
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 1: you're out there listening and you're planning a coup, don't

1153
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:45,920
Speaker 1: get drunken talkie. After Bridget and I will have a

1154
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 1: lot more coup advice in our new podcast, How to Coup,

1155
01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:52,439
Speaker 1: which launches on the I Heart network this August, so

1156
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:56,880
Speaker 1: you can wherever you get your podcast, how did you Yeah?

1157
01:00:56,920 --> 01:00:59,280
Speaker 1: If you're stockpiling F A L S and three oh

1158
01:00:59,320 --> 01:01:02,720
Speaker 1: eight mm o in hopes of overthrowing I don't know Uruguay,

1159
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:06,320
Speaker 1: don't do it. Until you listen to our podcast, because

1160
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:11,200
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a lot of advice for you. We

1161
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 1: should call it the A b C's for always be couping.

1162
01:01:16,760 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 1: You gotta be learning your A b c s. You know,

1163
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:22,280
Speaker 1: if you're going to carry out a coup, the including

1164
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 1: d don't drink um. That really is the number one

1165
01:01:26,720 --> 01:01:29,960
Speaker 1: lesson I've gotten. Like that is like the undoing of

1166
01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:34,280
Speaker 1: so many people in this story. It's like getting and honestly,

1167
01:01:34,360 --> 01:01:37,040
Speaker 1: like these are horrible, horrible people. I want to make

1168
01:01:37,080 --> 01:01:40,280
Speaker 1: it very clear, they're terrible. Fuck them all, But I

1169
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:42,600
Speaker 1: kind of I've been there where you like, have a plan,

1170
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:46,280
Speaker 1: you have a few drinks, you're feeling good. You start

1171
01:01:46,360 --> 01:01:50,120
Speaker 1: talking like, I don't know how it happens. Oh, we

1172
01:01:50,120 --> 01:01:53,760
Speaker 1: could call our podcast get a Coup. Oh that's good, dude,

1173
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:55,840
Speaker 1: that's a good one. That's a good one. It's gonna

1174
01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:57,919
Speaker 1: be a great show. Gonna be a great show. We'll

1175
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:05,080
Speaker 1: have to have Simon man on. Thank you so uh.

1176
01:02:05,160 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: When the point team flew in on March fourth, Obiang

1177
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 1: was ready um and still the coup plotters and the

1178
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:15,360
Speaker 1: advanced team member Nicki took steps to try to conceal

1179
01:02:15,440 --> 01:02:17,120
Speaker 1: the fact that we're about to execute a coup. So

1180
01:02:17,240 --> 01:02:19,200
Speaker 1: Nick Deta is like the head of the advanced team

1181
01:02:19,200 --> 01:02:21,720
Speaker 1: that lands in Equatorial Guinea a head of the second attempt,

1182
01:02:22,080 --> 01:02:24,600
Speaker 1: and as soon as he lands, he gets the impression

1183
01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:26,560
Speaker 1: that the government might be aware that they're about to

1184
01:02:26,600 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: carry out a coup. And his response to this is

1185
01:02:29,160 --> 01:02:31,800
Speaker 1: to send out a bunch of text messages on his phone,

1186
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:34,720
Speaker 1: which he was sure was bugged, stating, hey, guys were

1187
01:02:34,720 --> 01:02:37,600
Speaker 1: canceling the coup. Not because he was canceling the coupe

1188
01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:39,080
Speaker 1: because he caught that. We thought that would throw the

1189
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:44,800
Speaker 1: government off of their trail. I kind of love that

1190
01:02:46,240 --> 01:02:50,800
Speaker 1: smart people here. So just as the Spanish government hoped

1191
01:02:50,840 --> 01:02:53,200
Speaker 1: a successful coup would allow them to profit from Equatorial

1192
01:02:53,240 --> 01:02:56,120
Speaker 1: Guineas oil, South Africa felt that stopping the coup would

1193
01:02:56,120 --> 01:02:59,320
Speaker 1: help them profit off Equatorial Guineas oil. So, in addition

1194
01:02:59,360 --> 01:03:01,840
Speaker 1: to warning young South Africa put in a call to

1195
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:06,040
Speaker 1: Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe now and they were like, Hey,

1196
01:03:06,160 --> 01:03:08,400
Speaker 1: a bunch of mercenaries led by a British guy are

1197
01:03:08,400 --> 01:03:10,560
Speaker 1: going to be picking up a legal arms at your airport.

1198
01:03:10,640 --> 01:03:13,960
Speaker 1: Maybe do something about it. And Mugabe didn't really care

1199
01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:17,200
Speaker 1: that much about Equatorial guineas sovereignty. But he was, above

1200
01:03:17,240 --> 01:03:20,280
Speaker 1: all else terrified of Britain, which is the most reasonable

1201
01:03:20,280 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 1: thing about Robert Mugabe. And he and many of them

1202
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:25,880
Speaker 1: in his government were worried that their old colonial oppressor

1203
01:03:25,960 --> 01:03:28,600
Speaker 1: was plotting at coup against Zimbabwe. So when they hear

1204
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:30,560
Speaker 1: that a British mercenary is about to land in their

1205
01:03:30,560 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: country and pick up a pile of guns, they're not

1206
01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 1: worried about Equatorial Guinea. They're worried that he's going to

1207
01:03:35,240 --> 01:03:39,080
Speaker 1: try to overthrow his own country. So, to make a

1208
01:03:39,200 --> 01:03:42,120
Speaker 1: very long and dumb story short, man lands in Harare

1209
01:03:42,320 --> 01:03:44,280
Speaker 1: with the bulk of his army and they all get

1210
01:03:44,360 --> 01:03:46,400
Speaker 1: arrested before they can even so much as pick up

1211
01:03:46,400 --> 01:03:50,000
Speaker 1: their guns. His advanced team is also arrested. In Equatorial Guinea,

1212
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:53,800
Speaker 1: both groups of mercenaries mercenaries are thrown into horrible prisons

1213
01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:58,040
Speaker 1: and tortured. One man dies under torture in each country. UM.

1214
01:03:58,160 --> 01:04:01,840
Speaker 1: Now in Zimbabwe, man and his mercenaries are all tried,

1215
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:05,480
Speaker 1: convicted and sentenced to prison. Um Most of the grunts

1216
01:04:05,520 --> 01:04:07,480
Speaker 1: got a year with no time served for the six

1217
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:09,880
Speaker 1: months had already been incarcerted pre trial. So all these

1218
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:12,600
Speaker 1: poor black eyes just get no money and are in

1219
01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:16,960
Speaker 1: jail for eighteen months. Um. Yeah, most of the white

1220
01:04:16,960 --> 01:04:20,120
Speaker 1: men got sixteen months sentences. They all get fined two

1221
01:04:20,200 --> 01:04:23,560
Speaker 1: thousands Zimbabwe dollars each, which comes to about thirty cents,

1222
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:26,560
Speaker 1: so at least the fine isn't too much. But yeah,

1223
01:04:26,640 --> 01:04:29,760
Speaker 1: Man himself was sentenced to seven years and forfeited both

1224
01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:32,200
Speaker 1: the plane he bought in a hundred and eighty thousand

1225
01:04:32,200 --> 01:04:34,680
Speaker 1: dollars in cash. He also missed the birth of his

1226
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:37,560
Speaker 1: seventh child, which happened the same month that he was sentenced.

1227
01:04:38,000 --> 01:04:40,320
Speaker 1: H this was a mild penalty compared to the suffering

1228
01:04:40,360 --> 01:04:42,720
Speaker 1: experience by the families of the black soldiers. Man had

1229
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:45,920
Speaker 1: led into this stupid disaster because Man's family at least

1230
01:04:46,160 --> 01:04:50,840
Speaker 1: was still rich. According to Lawonga Coup quote, Viviana Chimuchi,

1231
01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:53,440
Speaker 1: wife of Eduardo who's one of the men, was desperate.

1232
01:04:53,520 --> 01:04:55,480
Speaker 1: We attended. We depend on people who have pity and

1233
01:04:55,520 --> 01:04:58,080
Speaker 1: on the churches we get food parcels. She explains. Her

1234
01:04:58,160 --> 01:05:00,919
Speaker 1: daughter Cecilia says, we heard the sentence of my father

1235
01:05:01,040 --> 01:05:03,560
Speaker 1: on the radio that we were We were surprised. They

1236
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:05,880
Speaker 1: told us he would come out now tears appear in

1237
01:05:05,920 --> 01:05:09,000
Speaker 1: her eyes. She blames man in the financiers. Those people

1238
01:05:09,040 --> 01:05:11,320
Speaker 1: put us into trouble. We're suffering because they put our

1239
01:05:11,320 --> 01:05:14,880
Speaker 1: father into problems. She once man punished. I'm happy not

1240
01:05:14,960 --> 01:05:16,880
Speaker 1: to give him seven years, no to give him the

1241
01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:23,720
Speaker 1: death penalty he deserves it. Wow powerful words. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1242
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:25,439
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, like yeah, man

1243
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:27,720
Speaker 1: and his fellow white guys, they all do suffer. Like

1244
01:05:27,760 --> 01:05:30,640
Speaker 1: they spend time in a really shitty prison and man,

1245
01:05:30,800 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 1: a couple of them get tortured. Um, but the fucking

1246
01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:37,960
Speaker 1: these these poor black dudes who probably didn't even really

1247
01:05:38,000 --> 01:05:41,160
Speaker 1: know what they were being paid to do in detail, uh,

1248
01:05:41,400 --> 01:05:43,680
Speaker 1: suffer the worst. And all of the white guys when

1249
01:05:43,680 --> 01:05:46,080
Speaker 1: they do get out of prison, have our rich still,

1250
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:48,320
Speaker 1: and all of these black guys their families are poorer

1251
01:05:48,360 --> 01:05:52,520
Speaker 1: than ever. It's it's some bullshit. It's so sad like that,

1252
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:55,800
Speaker 1: like what you've just described, I feel like is such

1253
01:05:55,840 --> 01:05:59,440
Speaker 1: a blueprint for so many things, where white guys go

1254
01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:01,520
Speaker 1: into this, they come out of it and they're fine,

1255
01:06:01,600 --> 01:06:04,600
Speaker 1: and then the people that that kind of like go

1256
01:06:04,720 --> 01:06:07,400
Speaker 1: along with it, who are more oft than than not

1257
01:06:07,640 --> 01:06:10,720
Speaker 1: black just have nothing. And it's just it's it's it's

1258
01:06:11,400 --> 01:06:13,640
Speaker 1: makes me, it's it's it's very upsetting, and I think

1259
01:06:13,640 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 1: it's like a common thing when we talk about Yes,

1260
01:06:17,640 --> 01:06:19,760
Speaker 1: it is by far the normal way for this ship

1261
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:24,520
Speaker 1: to go. So Man and his fellow whites had enough

1262
01:06:24,520 --> 01:06:27,120
Speaker 1: money to pay bribes that made their lives behind bars easier.

1263
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:29,560
Speaker 1: Zimbabwe in prison is never comfortable, but they were able

1264
01:06:29,560 --> 01:06:32,320
Speaker 1: to secure themselves enough food to stay relatively healthy, as

1265
01:06:32,320 --> 01:06:34,680
Speaker 1: well as a few luxuries. The same was not true

1266
01:06:34,680 --> 01:06:36,760
Speaker 1: for the black men that they'd planned to lead into battle.

1267
01:06:37,040 --> 01:06:39,200
Speaker 1: Those men spent their year behind bars on the edge

1268
01:06:39,200 --> 01:06:42,439
Speaker 1: of starvation. When they were freed, they found themselves in debt,

1269
01:06:42,560 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 1: nursing criminal records, and tired by their toxic affiliations to

1270
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:49,800
Speaker 1: one of the most disastrous coups in history. Simon Mann, however,

1271
01:06:49,920 --> 01:06:52,920
Speaker 1: was it extradited to Equatorial Guinea after four years in

1272
01:06:52,920 --> 01:06:55,720
Speaker 1: the Zimbabwe in prison, and it is widely believed that

1273
01:06:55,720 --> 01:06:58,720
Speaker 1: he was traded by Zimbabwe for oil. He went on

1274
01:06:58,760 --> 01:07:01,880
Speaker 1: to spend another eighteen month the Equatorial guineas notorious Black

1275
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:05,640
Speaker 1: Beach Prison. Before his extradition, President Obiang had promised to

1276
01:07:05,840 --> 01:07:11,080
Speaker 1: personally sodomize and skin alive the mercenary, but he didn't actually, yeah,

1277
01:07:11,080 --> 01:07:13,240
Speaker 1: he didn't really do that. Um. It was bad though.

1278
01:07:13,280 --> 01:07:16,440
Speaker 1: Man was tortured horribly and locked in solitary confinement. He

1279
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:19,120
Speaker 1: was beaten and starved. I'm not gonna say he suffered

1280
01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:22,040
Speaker 1: a fair punishment, but he was. He was punished like

1281
01:07:22,400 --> 01:07:26,600
Speaker 1: he has. He spends like years in unspeakable misery and torment.

1282
01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:32,040
Speaker 1: So you know, at least there's that. Uh. Yeah. During

1283
01:07:32,040 --> 01:07:34,520
Speaker 1: his time incarcerated, he was allowed to speak to journalists

1284
01:07:34,520 --> 01:07:36,600
Speaker 1: provided he telled them that he was being treated very well.

1285
01:07:36,640 --> 01:07:38,320
Speaker 1: And you can find interviews from him and like the

1286
01:07:38,360 --> 01:07:41,120
Speaker 1: mid aughts where he's talking about like, no, I haven't

1287
01:07:41,120 --> 01:07:43,200
Speaker 1: been tortured. Everything's good here. When he got out of

1288
01:07:43,200 --> 01:07:45,360
Speaker 1: prison in two thousand ten, he started being like, yeah,

1289
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:48,520
Speaker 1: I was absolutely tortured and he's probably not lying like

1290
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:52,360
Speaker 1: he almost certainly was tortured. Um. But yeah. One of

1291
01:07:52,360 --> 01:07:54,880
Speaker 1: these interviews I found from before he was released through

1292
01:07:54,880 --> 01:07:57,479
Speaker 1: the Independent, has a very choice quote from Mr Mann

1293
01:07:57,960 --> 01:08:01,720
Speaker 1: quote Hugo, tigers shoot, but you don't expect the tiger

1294
01:08:01,800 --> 01:08:08,720
Speaker 1: to win. Yeah. He was pardoned by President obiong And

1295
01:08:08,760 --> 01:08:10,600
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and in two thousand tend he gave

1296
01:08:10,600 --> 01:08:12,800
Speaker 1: an interview to the Guardian where he revealed the details

1297
01:08:12,800 --> 01:08:15,520
Speaker 1: of his torture and provided this quote. I didn't go

1298
01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:17,400
Speaker 1: there to make lots of money and sit on my

1299
01:08:17,439 --> 01:08:19,559
Speaker 1: own and say hey, I'm a rich man. I did

1300
01:08:19,600 --> 01:08:22,160
Speaker 1: it for my family, to improve their lives. I made

1301
01:08:22,160 --> 01:08:24,760
Speaker 1: the wrong choices. I am very sorry about that, for

1302
01:08:24,800 --> 01:08:26,920
Speaker 1: the pain and grief I brought my family, especially my

1303
01:08:27,000 --> 01:08:30,000
Speaker 1: daughter who was ten when I was incarcerated. Which is

1304
01:08:30,040 --> 01:08:33,080
Speaker 1: like Number one clearly doesn't give a shit about any

1305
01:08:33,120 --> 01:08:35,439
Speaker 1: of the like the soldiers that he put in danger

1306
01:08:35,560 --> 01:08:38,200
Speaker 1: through as a result of this. He doesn't even mention them.

1307
01:08:38,439 --> 01:08:42,760
Speaker 1: Doesn't even mention them. Um. And also like you were

1308
01:08:42,840 --> 01:08:46,360
Speaker 1: rich already, your family could have lived a comfortable life

1309
01:08:46,360 --> 01:08:48,880
Speaker 1: and you never needed to work again. You wanted them

1310
01:08:48,880 --> 01:08:51,439
Speaker 1: to be like own their own islands rich. That's why

1311
01:08:51,479 --> 01:08:53,960
Speaker 1: you did this. Oh my gosh, this could be a

1312
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:58,080
Speaker 1: whole other behind the bastard's episode of like people who

1313
01:08:58,320 --> 01:09:01,840
Speaker 1: have tons of money who just get this obsession with

1314
01:09:01,880 --> 01:09:04,799
Speaker 1: the money. Where you could have done you could have whatever,

1315
01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:07,720
Speaker 1: like shitty, illegal, horrible thing you did. You could have

1316
01:09:07,760 --> 01:09:10,800
Speaker 1: not done that and lived a comfortable life, Like what

1317
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:14,919
Speaker 1: is this obsession with Yeah, we have to be private

1318
01:09:14,960 --> 01:09:17,519
Speaker 1: island rich, and I don't. I don't even think it

1319
01:09:17,560 --> 01:09:20,000
Speaker 1: was really that. I honestly don't think I think the

1320
01:09:20,000 --> 01:09:22,639
Speaker 1: money was an incentive, but I think more than anything,

1321
01:09:23,120 --> 01:09:26,040
Speaker 1: man wanted the excitement and he wanted this to be

1322
01:09:26,080 --> 01:09:28,080
Speaker 1: able to brag about, like he wanted to be able

1323
01:09:28,080 --> 01:09:29,800
Speaker 1: to think this would be the feather in his cap

1324
01:09:29,840 --> 01:09:33,000
Speaker 1: as a mercenary. All these other mercenaries like Mike Cory

1325
01:09:33,080 --> 01:09:36,400
Speaker 1: and Bob Denard, they had led coups, like they had

1326
01:09:36,439 --> 01:09:39,559
Speaker 1: helped overthrow governments. He had never gotten to do that,

1327
01:09:39,600 --> 01:09:44,559
Speaker 1: and he wanted to. You know, it goes back. Yeah,

1328
01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:47,280
Speaker 1: if you had to say, how many people out there

1329
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:50,320
Speaker 1: to doing horrible things? Do you think you're doing it

1330
01:09:50,720 --> 01:09:55,559
Speaker 1: for bragging rights? If you had to say one way

1331
01:09:55,600 --> 01:10:00,320
Speaker 1: or the other, that's a very high percentage. Yeah, you know,

1332
01:10:00,479 --> 01:10:03,280
Speaker 1: you don't. You know, speaking of Tiger King, that that

1333
01:10:03,360 --> 01:10:06,640
Speaker 1: guy who was the inspiration for Scarface, that's clearly a

1334
01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:09,360
Speaker 1: guy who was just in it for the money. Because

1335
01:10:09,400 --> 01:10:11,599
Speaker 1: he he doesn't seem to have any desire to brag

1336
01:10:11,640 --> 01:10:13,720
Speaker 1: about it, like he just wanted to fucking He got rich,

1337
01:10:14,040 --> 01:10:15,880
Speaker 1: he did his time, he got out, and he bought

1338
01:10:15,880 --> 01:10:17,920
Speaker 1: a fucking farm in the middle of nowhere. I can

1339
01:10:18,000 --> 01:10:19,920
Speaker 1: respect that, even if you do awful things to get

1340
01:10:19,920 --> 01:10:23,439
Speaker 1: the money. But most of them want everyone to know

1341
01:10:23,479 --> 01:10:27,360
Speaker 1: how cool they are. So up. It's like worse to me.

1342
01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:31,360
Speaker 1: I don't know. I find it like yeah more yeah,

1343
01:10:31,400 --> 01:10:38,439
Speaker 1: it's like it's like more like, um, I can't understand it. Yeah, yep, yep,

1344
01:10:39,640 --> 01:10:43,479
Speaker 1: souh more. Recently, um, in like a couple of weeks ago,

1345
01:10:44,040 --> 01:10:47,599
Speaker 1: uh fucking uh. Simon Mann was interviewed by The Daily

1346
01:10:47,640 --> 01:10:50,320
Speaker 1: Mail about the coronavirus epidemic of all things, and the

1347
01:10:50,360 --> 01:10:52,320
Speaker 1: Daily Mail being a giant piece of ship. They were

1348
01:10:52,320 --> 01:10:54,880
Speaker 1: basically like, Hey, you spent a bunch of time in

1349
01:10:54,960 --> 01:10:59,640
Speaker 1: solitary confinement. What's your advice for people going through quarantine? Oh? No,

1350
01:11:02,720 --> 01:11:07,640
Speaker 1: the idea for a fucking article I can conceive of. Um.

1351
01:11:07,680 --> 01:11:10,800
Speaker 1: But Man's quote is really funny. Quote. You have to

1352
01:11:10,840 --> 01:11:13,360
Speaker 1: make your world the people in the place of your confinement,

1353
01:11:13,439 --> 01:11:15,680
Speaker 1: and stop constantly thinking at this time we should be

1354
01:11:15,680 --> 01:11:17,160
Speaker 1: doing this or that and the kids should be going

1355
01:11:17,200 --> 01:11:21,559
Speaker 1: back to school. Those thoughts are the ones that hurt you. Um,

1356
01:11:21,600 --> 01:11:23,920
Speaker 1: which I don't know, maybe is good advice. I kind

1357
01:11:23,920 --> 01:11:27,000
Speaker 1: of refused to acknowledge this guy is being capable of

1358
01:11:27,040 --> 01:11:31,320
Speaker 1: giving good advice, so fuck it. Yeah, fuck him. I

1359
01:11:31,320 --> 01:11:34,479
Speaker 1: don't want to hear his advice. He honestly like, this

1360
01:11:34,520 --> 01:11:36,439
Speaker 1: is this is how I where I'm at. That same

1361
01:11:36,520 --> 01:11:38,760
Speaker 1: advice could be given by somebody else and I'd be like, oh,

1362
01:11:38,760 --> 01:11:41,000
Speaker 1: good advice, could advice? It's given by him, and I'm like,

1363
01:11:41,080 --> 01:11:54,960
Speaker 1: fucking I'm terrible advice. Yeah, fucking terrible advice. Well badka

1364
01:11:57,000 --> 01:11:59,519
Speaker 1: you want to know would be good advice? Right now? Uh?

1365
01:12:00,720 --> 01:12:04,960
Speaker 1: Robert advising people to go to go listen to Bridget's

1366
01:12:04,960 --> 01:12:08,559
Speaker 1: new podcast. Yes, I can tell you all about it.

1367
01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:15,400
Speaker 1: Oh please do um, thank you, Sophie. UM. My new

1368
01:12:15,439 --> 01:12:17,759
Speaker 1: podcast is called There Are No Girls on the Internet.

1369
01:12:17,800 --> 01:12:21,400
Speaker 1: It drops on I Heart Radio on July seven, and

1370
01:12:21,520 --> 01:12:26,240
Speaker 1: it's all about exploring the intersections of gender, technology and

1371
01:12:26,280 --> 01:12:29,080
Speaker 1: the Internet. You know. It's a culture show that really

1372
01:12:29,120 --> 01:12:33,360
Speaker 1: asked how have women and other marginalized voices shaped the

1373
01:12:33,400 --> 01:12:36,320
Speaker 1: experience of being online? And we really have shaped it.

1374
01:12:36,479 --> 01:12:43,320
Speaker 1: So please check it out. Question mark exclamation point. Do it.

1375
01:12:43,320 --> 01:12:48,719
Speaker 1: It's a requirement of joining our cult. Yep, yep. So

1376
01:12:49,240 --> 01:12:54,880
Speaker 1: that's the episode. Go, I don't know, overthrow a sovereign nation.

1377
01:12:55,120 --> 01:12:57,880
Speaker 1: Give it a shot. Just stay sober, stay sober. Yeah,

1378
01:12:57,960 --> 01:13:01,240
Speaker 1: if you're gonna drink, do it after, don't do it during.

1379
01:13:01,280 --> 01:13:03,800
Speaker 1: And if you're gonna drink, like keep your mouth set,

1380
01:13:03,840 --> 01:13:06,760
Speaker 1: like don't get mouthie, don't drink and coup and don't

1381
01:13:06,840 --> 01:13:10,160
Speaker 1: text in coup. All of the rules for driving apply

1382
01:13:10,320 --> 01:13:20,880
Speaker 1: to coups. Yeah, that's the lesson all of them. That

1383
01:13:20,960 --> 01:13:25,639
Speaker 1: was good. I like Jesus Christ. These people are so dumb,

1384
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:28,919
Speaker 1: all right, all right, cool, Well that's the s spode

1385
01:13:32,439 --> 01:13:32,479
Speaker 1: h