Speaker 1: It's the part of the second to Now that's not
Speaker 1: how we should introduce a podcast. Welcome back to Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards. This is a podcast about terrible people. And
Speaker 1: this is part two of our series on the Wonga Coup,
Speaker 1: which started as an episode about a coup, but the
Speaker 1: first part was really just a more general description about
Speaker 1: the history of coups in Africa as both a literary
Speaker 1: tradition and as a real attempted thing, ending with the
Speaker 1: terrible story of the dictators of Equatorial Guinea. My guest
Speaker 1: on part two, as with part one, is Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: I get that. I get the fake airhorns. I love it.
Speaker 1: There's a national here. Yeah, sadly there's a national airhorn shortage,
Speaker 1: so we were out of the real ones. But when
Speaker 1: when those come back in stock, I will I will
Speaker 1: force our editor to put them back in. Please do.
Speaker 1: I I will only go on podcasts where I am
Speaker 1: introduced the plot with airhorn, so please please do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it should be illegal to introduce people any
Speaker 1: other way, to be honest, Like, can you imagine if
Speaker 1: that's how like like first dates always went, and just
Speaker 1: like anytime you're out at the bar, you just randomly
Speaker 1: hear you like because like two people are meeting on
Speaker 1: tender or something. I love it. My people are Caribbeans,
Speaker 1: so we love a good airhorn. Oh yeah, yeah you do.
Speaker 1: I would really like some sort of sound effect to
Speaker 1: let me know if it's like a cute meat or
Speaker 1: if it's like this guy is or this person is horrifying,
Speaker 1: Like I would like to know that. I would like
Speaker 1: some sort of sound of what to happen. What would
Speaker 1: be your horrifying sound effect for a for a date?
Speaker 1: What's the what's the theme song of Hannity? I'm Sean
Speaker 1: Hanny dy I eat man at Tease. I think that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that's that's basically it. Yeah, yeah, Bridget,
Speaker 1: you are the host of a new podcast launching next
Speaker 1: month h called There Are No Women on the Internet. Right,
Speaker 1: that's true. Uh, it's not mostly true. It launches on
Speaker 1: July seven, and it's called there Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. But you got the broad stroke? Oh wait,
Speaker 1: June is after Okay, yep, sorry, well I got the
Speaker 1: broad strokes. And speaking of broad strokes, let's get the
Speaker 1: broad strokes of this coup, right, Um. Yeah, I'm a
Speaker 1: master of transitions. Thank you. Uh. So, yeah, we we
Speaker 1: ended our episode talking about the dictators of Equatorial Guinea
Speaker 1: and this attempted coup that didn't turn into a coup
Speaker 1: but did turn into a successful book, which is, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what level of privilege that is,
Speaker 1: where you like attempt to overthrow a sovereign nation in
Speaker 1: order to make a profit and fail but still get
Speaker 1: rich off of the book. Like that's that's like I
Speaker 1: feel like there's another level of white privilege that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to describe that. That's like
Speaker 1: platinum white privilege that it's like yeah, like yeah, that
Speaker 1: is some like ultra uncut pure white privilege. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of white privilege you need the Costco card
Speaker 1: to take advantage of, right, Like you gotta pay an
Speaker 1: extra sixty five dollars. There's a yearly subscription that you
Speaker 1: have to pay into for that. So yeah, so yes, um,
Speaker 1: and now we're going to start So, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: go back in time again. And now that we've explained
Speaker 1: all of these coups and mercenaries in the situation in
Speaker 1: Equatorial Guinea, we're going to go back in time, um
Speaker 1: to talk about another mercenary before we get back to
Speaker 1: Equatorial Guinea, and this mercenary's name is Simon Francis man
Speaker 1: Uh Now Simon was born on June nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: His family were British as all hell, I think they're
Speaker 1: Irish British so like British people who became part or
Speaker 1: Irish people who like did all enough to become part
Speaker 1: of the British aristocracy and got to be a lot
Speaker 1: less Irish as a result of things. Anyway, I don't
Speaker 1: really know. Um. The man family wealth came from brewing,
Speaker 1: and right around the same time Simon was born, his
Speaker 1: family sold their family business to a big company in
Speaker 1: return for a pile of cash and a seat on
Speaker 1: the board. This meant that Simon grew up very comfortable,
Speaker 1: but it also meant that he would need to find
Speaker 1: a new career for himself when he grew up. Taking
Speaker 1: over the family business would not be an option. In
Speaker 1: the grand tradition of all fancy English people, his parents
Speaker 1: sent him the funk Away to spend his childhood and Eaton,
Speaker 1: which is frequently referred to as the nursery of England's
Speaker 1: gentleman uh Eaton, is probably the most prestigious high school
Speaker 1: on the planet. Boris Johnson went there, as did David Cameron,
Speaker 1: Prince William, Prince Harry, Tom Hittleston, and in general about
Speaker 1: thirty of all of the famous British men who have
Speaker 1: ever lived like it eatens where you go if you're
Speaker 1: a fancy British boy. Now this is like some like
Speaker 1: very fancy British white guy shit. I feel yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: this is like this is this is the peak of
Speaker 1: fancy British white guy ship like it does it doesn't
Speaker 1: get I would say the whitest thing it is possible
Speaker 1: to be is a British person who went to Eaton.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's like like top tier of of white dude.
Speaker 1: Like very few of us are that white mm hmm. Now,
Speaker 1: Eating currently cost fifty two dollars a year in tuition,
Speaker 1: and the cost was broadly similar when Simon went there.
Speaker 1: Only students from age thirteen to eighteen are accepted, and
Speaker 1: the application process starts at age ten. Eating students each
Speaker 1: get their own separate room. Students are split up into
Speaker 1: fifty person houses where these boys are watched over by
Speaker 1: a full time staff supervised by what a Business Insider
Speaker 1: article I found calls a hired dame. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't imagine having that on your resume. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: a hired dame for about four years in the nineteen nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they also couldn't they couldn't just call it like
Speaker 1: an r A like here, like familiar with It has
Speaker 1: to be a hired dame. Poor people have r a's
Speaker 1: bridget Rich people have hired dames. And I do think
Speaker 1: like your r a's job is just to make sure
Speaker 1: nobody burns the building down. Really like a hired dame.
Speaker 1: They're doing a lot. More so, like she's managing this
Speaker 1: whole staff of people who like adults, So all these
Speaker 1: kids when the eighteen are living alone in little apartments
Speaker 1: and having an entire staff of adults clean for them,
Speaker 1: um clean their clothing, like, launder their clothing, cook food
Speaker 1: for them, and like this woman whose job it is
Speaker 1: to manage all of the people who manages their lives,
Speaker 1: like it's this kind of imagine what that does for
Speaker 1: you as a little kid growing up, Like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like it would really fuck me up to
Speaker 1: have an adult woman doing all this ship for me,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little kid. I feel that there's no
Speaker 1: way I can come out of that being well adjusted. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the case with Etonians, as they're known.
Speaker 1: So after rich Boy High school, Man joined the military
Speaker 1: and went into officer training at the Royal Military Academy
Speaker 1: at Sandhurst. In addition to being Brewers, the men and
Speaker 1: his family had a long history of military service. Simon
Speaker 1: graduated and followed in his father's footsteps by accepting a
Speaker 1: commission in the Royal Scots Guards. He was good at soldiering,
Speaker 1: and after a few years he applied to join the
Speaker 1: Special Air Service, Britain's equivalent to the Navy Seals. He
Speaker 1: eventually became a troop commander in the s A S
Speaker 1: and specialized in counter terrorism and intelligence gathering. Both of
Speaker 1: those specialties will become powerfully ironic as we go along,
Speaker 1: but for now. Simon did his three year rotation and
Speaker 1: then returned to the regular Army, where he was stationed
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland. He bounced around Cold War era Europe
Speaker 1: in Central America until the early nineteen eighties, when he
Speaker 1: grew bored of army life and retired. Man immediately moved
Speaker 1: to the private military sector, joining a company run by
Speaker 1: S A. S founder David Sterling, who was pretty close
Speaker 1: to just being a straight up fascist. Uh. And in
Speaker 1: general Old Man's friends during this period were members of
Speaker 1: like a trend in British conservatism that started in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies when the Labor Party won control of
Speaker 1: the government and right wingers began ranting about communist infiltration.
Speaker 1: In the early seventies, Sterling, his boss, had solicited volunteers
Speaker 1: to join what he called a strike breaking army to
Speaker 1: destroy the unions in Britain violently. Um. This put him
Speaker 1: ideologically right in line with Margaret Thatcher's political mentor airy Neive,
Speaker 1: who urged a right wing coup against the Labor government.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, this also put Sterling and his fellows right
Speaker 1: in line with David Bowie, who openly supported an extreme
Speaker 1: right wing government and stated in the early seventies that
Speaker 1: Britain needed a dictator. Yeah, but you know that about
Speaker 1: David Bowie, did you. Yeah, when like in the seventies,
Speaker 1: when unions got super powerful in England and uh, the
Speaker 1: Labor government started winning a bunch of David Bowie, an
Speaker 1: extreme right wing government and a coup and a dictator. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know this is like when you're presented with, like
Speaker 1: when you know, the idea of a problematic saves, when
Speaker 1: you're presented with some unfavorable information about somebody that you
Speaker 1: love and you're like, I pretend I do not see it.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's like I'm like, ohs it Sylvie
Speaker 1: with your Lager's jersey. Of course. Exactly, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, as much as we may try to be here,
Speaker 1: we all have someone like that. I love what I
Speaker 1: love Bill Shatner, and he's objectively a monster. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the talk of coups on the British right wing mostly
Speaker 1: died down in nineteen seventy nine when Margaret Thatcher was
Speaker 1: elected Prime Minister, but Simon Mann's social circle in the
Speaker 1: early eighties was made up almost exclusively of folks who
Speaker 1: were unabashed supporters of violently suppressing the left. He worked
Speaker 1: with David Sterling's company as a rent a mercenary and
Speaker 1: hobnobbed with high society. But a desk job didn't suit Man,
Speaker 1: and he was already getting restless by the time his boss,
Speaker 1: Guy in trouble for misusing funds donated to this to
Speaker 1: a charitable foundation. Lucky for him, by this point, Saddam
Speaker 1: Hussein had invaded Kuwait and the British military was suddenly
Speaker 1: involved in something interesting again. Man re enlisted and joined
Speaker 1: British Army staff in Saudi Arabia. The war didn't last long,
Speaker 1: and in its wake, Simon Mann was left more bored
Speaker 1: and restless than ever. He got involved with an oil
Speaker 1: firm that was investing in the newly emerged oil industry
Speaker 1: in Angola, and as luck would have it, just as
Speaker 1: Man started sniffing around Angola in nineteen ninety two, the
Speaker 1: nation found itself in the midst of a civil war.
Speaker 1: Now Angola's second largest political party, UNITA, had started out
Speaker 1: as a left wing organization supported by the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China, but during the nineteen eighties UNITA had pivoted
Speaker 1: to the hard right under the command of Jonas Savimbi.
Speaker 1: Thanks to our old buddy Paul Manafort, it received piles
Speaker 1: and piles of money and guns from the Reagan administration
Speaker 1: during this period. In nineteen ninety two, UNITA troops overran
Speaker 1: several oil pump thing of a jigs near a town
Speaker 1: called Soyo. The Angolan army failed to retake the will field.
Speaker 1: Now this was a threat to Man's investments in the area,
Speaker 1: but more than that, it was an opportunity. He and
Speaker 1: his business partner, an entrepreneur named Tony Buckingham, approached the
Speaker 1: government of Angola and said, Hey, we're pretty sure we
Speaker 1: could put together a mercenary army to take care of
Speaker 1: this rebel problem for you, and Angola said, yes, it
Speaker 1: really is that easy, or at least it was in
Speaker 1: the early nineties too. Get your own army. Yeah, that's cool,
Speaker 1: totally cool. Like, wouldn't it be cool if you could
Speaker 1: just like a master or own army with that amount
Speaker 1: of ease, welcome back come about. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do with this whole fd A thing.
Speaker 1: But um, it's it's it's harder than I thought to
Speaker 1: amass your own army, to be honest, frustrating. What would
Speaker 1: what would your the what would your army be called?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think I don't know. I I uh,
Speaker 1: maybe you're right. Maybe that's why I haven't gotten an
Speaker 1: army yet, is that I haven't figured out the branding
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, that's a shame. I'll have to think
Speaker 1: about that. Bridget So the whole, the whole, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Simon Mann and his partner Buckingham got to follow in
Speaker 1: the grand tradition established by Bob Dinnard in myke Cory.
Speaker 1: Only unlike those men, they were helping to keep a
Speaker 1: ruler in power and actually fighting against far right militants.
Speaker 1: So you might call this a promising start, or at
Speaker 1: least as promising a start as any mercenary outfit can have. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, broadly. Um. It doesn't end well, though, As
Speaker 1: Adam Roberts notes, Quote Man, however, was a little different.
Speaker 1: He was as likely to wear a crumpled business suit
Speaker 1: as riomless spectacles and rimless spectacles as camouflage or chest webbing.
Speaker 1: He was an early example of a new sort of mercenary,
Speaker 1: the type familiar with company law, bank transfers, and investor agreements,
Speaker 1: as with the workings of a browning pistol. In other words,
Speaker 1: Simon Mann was probably the first example of a modern
Speaker 1: mercenary leader, the prototype for men like Eric Prince so
Speaker 1: before him. Mercenaries are like these, like really hard bitten people,
Speaker 1: like guys who go to war in their youth and
Speaker 1: never escape it, and like you know, like Bob Dinnard
Speaker 1: in My Corey, like those those dudes saw heavy, heavy combat,
Speaker 1: and it just like they were just fucked up in
Speaker 1: a way that this was all they could do, and
Speaker 1: all of their men were kind of the same way.
Speaker 1: Simon Mann is someone who is perfectly capable of succeeding
Speaker 1: in the non shooting people world, and in fact has
Speaker 1: been very successful in that, but he likes the excitement
Speaker 1: of war, so he's like he gets involved in this
Speaker 1: mercenary company as a business um, and he's really the
Speaker 1: first example of that. He's the Eric Prince type, right, um,
Speaker 1: where he's a good he's good at running a corporation,
Speaker 1: and he also just thinks it's cool to have an army. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of the sort of dude that
Speaker 1: man is. And he blazes a trail. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's really a dangerous recipe, that kind of that
Speaker 1: kind of dude who thinks it's it's cool to have
Speaker 1: an army. Yeah. Yeah, because he's gonna use it. You know.
Speaker 1: There's something to be said. Like Mike Horrer, as we
Speaker 1: talked about, was a monster, like killed a ton of people,
Speaker 1: super racist, but at least he got shot at a lot.
Speaker 1: Like he and his men like they like he he
Speaker 1: he didn't. He wasn't just like sitting in a boardroom
Speaker 1: while people committed murder on his behalf like he was.
Speaker 1: He was out there, and I guess that's something Simon
Speaker 1: Mann is going to be the sits in a boardroom
Speaker 1: while people get shot kind of leader. Um yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not really an adrenaline junkie um in the
Speaker 1: in in the traditional way, Like he wasn't addicted to
Speaker 1: like running into combat and getting shot at directly. He
Speaker 1: was happy staying behind the lines and basically playing. Like
Speaker 1: you get the feeling that running a mercenary army for
Speaker 1: Simon Mann is like what a lot of people get
Speaker 1: out of playing real time strategy video games. Like that's
Speaker 1: kind of what he likes about it is it's like
Speaker 1: the stakes and stuff. Um so yeah. He hires a
Speaker 1: bunch of South African and British mercenaries to fill out
Speaker 1: his army. These are white and mostly black men who
Speaker 1: had worked in counter terrorism, which counter terrorism within the
Speaker 1: South African context in this period meant that they had
Speaker 1: been supporting the apartheid government of South Africa and fighting
Speaker 1: against like Nelson Mandela and his crew. Um So, for
Speaker 1: the sake of having a corporate structure and all the
Speaker 1: legal permits necessary to buy guns and stuff. Man somehow
Speaker 1: wound up in control of a private security firm called
Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes. We'll talk about them a little bit later.
Speaker 1: The bulk of his soldiers were veterans of the thirty
Speaker 1: two Battalion, which is a veteran South African unit who
Speaker 1: had fought in Angola before, and they've been fighting on
Speaker 1: the same side as Jonas Savimbi then because the apartheid
Speaker 1: government backed this far right militia. But since the apartheid
Speaker 1: government had fallen, you know, they just wound up on
Speaker 1: the other side, fighting against these guys that they fought
Speaker 1: alongside before, which actually works out great because they know
Speaker 1: all their tricks. Um thirty two Battalion had a reputation
Speaker 1: for toughness and for viciousness. Their nickname was the Terrible Ones,
Speaker 1: and in February of nineteen three they got a chance
Speaker 1: to prove they deserve the name. Man's Little Army launched
Speaker 1: an assault to retake the oil fields of Soil, supported
Speaker 1: by the Angolan Air Force and army. The core of
Speaker 1: their force was just twenty five men, but these were
Speaker 1: hardened veterans, and they had the assault skills necessary to
Speaker 1: act as the tip of the spear for the undisciplined
Speaker 1: and largely amateur and Golan army. The Unita rebels were
Speaker 1: forced to retreat and the end Goolan Army to established
Speaker 1: a beachhead on the Soyu oil field. The success so
Speaker 1: You earned Executive Outcomes a reputation for ferocity and competence.
Speaker 1: The England government offered Man an eighty million dollar contract
Speaker 1: if his firm would help them continue the war against
Speaker 1: Unita and train the regular Angolan army. More battles followed,
Speaker 1: and Executive Outcomes expanded into a much larger force, eventually
Speaker 1: reaching more than a thousand regular employees, and Goalie even
Speaker 1: let Man help run their air force. In nineteen nine four,
Speaker 1: they carried out what Man claimed was the largest combined
Speaker 1: arms attack in Africa since World War Two, forcing UNITA
Speaker 1: out of the Soyu oil fields entirely. So he it
Speaker 1: seems like it's working out so far. Uh in The
Speaker 1: mid nineties were in general probably a pretty happy time
Speaker 1: for Simon Mann. He expanded his little army into a
Speaker 1: medium sized army, complete with planes and helicopters. From nine
Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety six. They fought numerous battles in Angola
Speaker 1: and other African countries. Twenty one Executive Outcomes men were
Speaker 1: killed in various clashes, but they racked up a much
Speaker 1: higher death toll among the rebels they fought. Unita was
Speaker 1: largely funded by diamond mines, and Man's contract specified that
Speaker 1: he got a cut of any diamond mine freed by
Speaker 1: his men. So this is really interesting because it leads
Speaker 1: to they don't just get like a percentage of the profits.
Speaker 1: Executive outcomes like as part of like a web of companies,
Speaker 1: and it's almost impossible. I don't think anyone has ever
Speaker 1: really done a good job of unraveling all of them.
Speaker 1: But Simon Mann and his business partners create like multiple
Speaker 1: different companies, including a mining company that they have actually
Speaker 1: like they get a contract to run these diamond mines
Speaker 1: that they liberate with their soldiers, and then the mining
Speaker 1: company that Simon Man owned starts mining the diamonds, so
Speaker 1: they get money from the diamond mining. UM. He creates
Speaker 1: a subsidiary called branch in g which does a lot
Speaker 1: of the oil extractions. And this is where things start
Speaker 1: to get really fucking complicated. UM and In fact, things
Speaker 1: have been complicated from the beginning because at this point
Speaker 1: in Africa, all of these different fucking mercenary companies and
Speaker 1: mining companies are all like like it's it's it's shady
Speaker 1: fucking corporate ship. Like where you you'll have like twenty
Speaker 1: different companies that are all really the same company run
Speaker 1: by the same three or four guides, but they're different
Speaker 1: companies on paper. Um. So, like Executive Outcomes had started
Speaker 1: as a front company for a South African war criminals
Speaker 1: that he could evade international arms embargoes. And I don't
Speaker 1: really know how Man wound up running it, but like
Speaker 1: Man wound up basically using this as like the face
Speaker 1: for his company, even though like the real company actually
Speaker 1: doing most of the fighting for Executive Outcomes was another
Speaker 1: company Man had founded called Sandline. Like it's all fucking
Speaker 1: stupidly complicated. Um And to make matters even more complicated,
Speaker 1: a bunch of other shady companies that we all know
Speaker 1: and love were involved to for so, for example, that
Speaker 1: big first deal that Executive Outcomes brokeren with Angola to
Speaker 1: have their their their fucking mercenary army liberate those diamond minds.
Speaker 1: It was brokered by de beers, so like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we all know to beers. Yeah, this is like tail
Speaker 1: as old as time when it comes to fucking like
Speaker 1: rich gas companies, like shell companies, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: this is tales all the time, like companies where it's
Speaker 1: all like, oh, these different companies with like crazy names
Speaker 1: and it's all one company, but they were actually like
Speaker 1: five companies. All you need to know is that, like
Speaker 1: somebody is getting fucking paid and shady shit is happening, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: All you really need to know about this in particular
Speaker 1: is that like Simon Mann and a handful of his
Speaker 1: friends at the top, who are all white dudes, are
Speaker 1: getting paid millions of dollars and all of the fighting
Speaker 1: and dying is being done by mercenaries sixty or seventy
Speaker 1: percent of whom are black guys. Um, And they're not
Speaker 1: getting paid so much like it's good money for them.
Speaker 1: It ain't Simon Man money, um, because the real moneys
Speaker 1: and the diamonds in the oil um. The mercenaries are
Speaker 1: just a way to get at the diamonds in the
Speaker 1: oil um. Yeah, and you'll hear a lot of like
Speaker 1: libertarian types talk about how good a job Executive Outcomes
Speaker 1: did here um, and they did a great job at
Speaker 1: fighting Unita, but they didn't really care about stabilizing Angola.
Speaker 1: They cared about stabilizing the mines and oil fields of
Speaker 1: Angola and the roads that lad those two distribution centers UM,
Speaker 1: which is why they didn't actually achieve any long term
Speaker 1: security for the region. UM. So yeah, by nine, Executive
Speaker 1: Outcomes was effectively a giant web of companies, all more
Speaker 1: or less run by Simon Mann and his buddy Buckingham,
Speaker 1: with interest in mining, oil, security, air transport, and everything imaginable.
Speaker 1: In nineteen the government of Sierra Leone went to Executive
Speaker 1: Outcomes begging for their help and suppressing a brutal insurgent
Speaker 1: group called the RUF. Now, the RUF had been formed
Speaker 1: by a disaffected army corporal and they basically gone from
Speaker 1: fringe political armed group to violent psychopaths. Their trademark tactic
Speaker 1: was severing the arms of their victims. Depending on how
Speaker 1: pissed they were, ore UF men would either give short
Speaker 1: sleeves where they amputated just the hand, or long sleeves
Speaker 1: where they took the whole arm. So yeah, these guys
Speaker 1: are bad uh and they're kicking the ship out of
Speaker 1: the government to Sierra Leone, and a big part of
Speaker 1: why is that they're receiving money in arms from Liberian
Speaker 1: President Charles Taylor. And so in short order, Sierra Leone
Speaker 1: is near collapse and Executive Outcomes gets hired. They come
Speaker 1: in and they effectively changed that. They pushed the rebels
Speaker 1: back and focus heavily on retaking diamond minds the RUF
Speaker 1: had occupied. This was a decent tactic, but it was
Speaker 1: also very profitable. The Sierra Leonese government had awarded a
Speaker 1: lucrative diamond mining contract to Branch Energy, a subsidiary of
Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes UM, and the Executive Outcomes war against the
Speaker 1: r u F went well enough that in nineties seven
Speaker 1: seven ninety seven, Sierra Leone was able to hold elections. Now,
Speaker 1: the story that comes next is really complicated. The story
Speaker 1: the site you usually here is like again kind of
Speaker 1: the libertarian mercenaries are good story, which is that like
Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes comes in, they stabilize Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone
Speaker 1: has their first independent elections that are like decent, and
Speaker 1: then the I m F and the UN pressure the
Speaker 1: new president to sign a peace deal with the r
Speaker 1: UF that includes them forcing out executive outcomes. And as
Speaker 1: soon as that happens, the r u F goes on
Speaker 1: the offensive again and the co countries drawn into war.
Speaker 1: And if you know, these mercenaries have been allowed to
Speaker 1: keep doing their job, Sierra Leone would have stayed peaceful.
Speaker 1: And it's the fault of the the u N and
Speaker 1: the i m F. There's certainly blamed for the u
Speaker 1: N and the i m F in here, but also
Speaker 1: documents that have been released more recently show that the
Speaker 1: President of the United States actually pressured or sorry that
Speaker 1: the president of Sierra Leone went to UH, the United
Speaker 1: States and was like, I want to kick these mercenaries
Speaker 1: out because I don't think they're good for the country.
Speaker 1: Will you demand that I kick them out so that
Speaker 1: I have an excuse to say that I've like that,
Speaker 1: like the international communities forcing me to force these guys out.
Speaker 1: It's actually much more complicated than people who just want
Speaker 1: to make this into a pro mercenary story want to see. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fucking it's it's a whole mess. This this, this
Speaker 1: whole story is a mess. And if it was true
Speaker 1: that like mercenaries were good, and if they've been allowed
Speaker 1: to do their thing, Sierra Leone would have stayed in peace. Um.
Speaker 1: Then Sierra Leone probably wouldn't have had a civil war
Speaker 1: that lasted for years, because mercenaries continued to be a
Speaker 1: part of the fighting in Sierra Leone for the entirety
Speaker 1: of the nineties and into the early two thousands. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the government of Sierra Leone, after kicking Executive
Speaker 1: Outcomes out, hired Sandline International, which was a subsidiary of
Speaker 1: Executive Outcomes, to back the Nigerian Army and its peacekeeping there.
Speaker 1: And things were still bloody for years. So it's just
Speaker 1: like a big fucking stupid mess. But the point of
Speaker 1: the matter is that mercenaries were good at capturing minds
Speaker 1: um and fighting rebels. They were not good at actually
Speaker 1: developing a stable society in any of the countries in
Speaker 1: which they were active UM and Yeah. In spite of
Speaker 1: their protestations that they to bring peace to Africa, Executive
Speaker 1: Outcomes made the bulk of its money by getting poor
Speaker 1: countries to sign over mining rights to branch energy UM. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, Sandline International breached a u N
Speaker 1: embargo on weapons sales to see ear leone. The company
Speaker 1: also got in trouble in Papua New Guinea UM and
Speaker 1: Man was flown out of the country under shady circumstances
Speaker 1: for trying to help them put down a rebellion. It's
Speaker 1: just a whole fucking complicated, messy story. Now. The end
Speaker 1: of it is that by nineteen ninety eight, Africa was
Speaker 1: filled with countless competing mercenary firms and nearly all of
Speaker 1: them were either based in South Africa or mainly employed
Speaker 1: South African soldiers UM. And the Mandela administration got really
Speaker 1: fucking angry at this and was like, all you guys
Speaker 1: are doing is perpetuating violence and all these countries and
Speaker 1: like adding fuel to the fire and making a shipload
Speaker 1: of money for yourselves. Fuck this. So in nineteen South
Speaker 1: Africa passes the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which makes it
Speaker 1: illegal for South Africa is to offer military aid to
Speaker 1: foreign country companies. And this means that in nine executive
Speaker 1: outcomes goes out of business um because they can't really
Speaker 1: operate anymore. So South Africa shuts a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff down very effectively. So that's good, Yeah, it is good.
Speaker 1: One thing I want to say is can we just
Speaker 1: I know this sounds kind of silly. Can we talk
Speaker 1: about the name executive outcomes? There are more? Is there
Speaker 1: a more? Sort of like it's not clear what we do,
Speaker 1: but you like, no one involves somebody getting rich and
Speaker 1: fucking shady business dealings name than executives outcomes. Yeah, executive outcomes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It it is like the name you would give a
Speaker 1: mercenary company in like a Paul Verhoeven movie. Like that's
Speaker 1: what it's like, a RoboCop sounding fucking name. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It totally is yeah, yeah, yeah, and they are out
Speaker 1: of business by and again this is heralded as a
Speaker 1: tragic thing by a lot of folks. Um. I have
Speaker 1: somewhat different opinions. Um, but yeah, it is a complicated
Speaker 1: as hell story. And the fact that like there's all
Speaker 1: these companies that are on paper even sometimes like competing
Speaker 1: with each other, but also a lot of them are
Speaker 1: owned by the same people. It's a big fucking mess.
Speaker 1: But you know what's not a mess, Bridget tell me
Speaker 1: what's not a mess? The products and services that support
Speaker 1: this podcast. Oh, I want to hear all about them.
Speaker 1: Is there some avenue where I can do that? No,
Speaker 1: just just kidding that Avenue is now all right, we're
Speaker 1: back bridget So, yeah, that's executive outcomes. They're they're they're
Speaker 1: gone in Man in Buckingham sell off their interests in
Speaker 1: most of their subsidiary companies and they get they're both
Speaker 1: super fucking rich. We don't know how rich Man gets.
Speaker 1: He claims Buckingham made a lot more money. Buckingham went
Speaker 1: up with something like a hundred and fifty millions. Simon
Speaker 1: Mann did very well for himself though. They're both millionaires,
Speaker 1: and he was already rich. So yeah, good ship um. Now.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, the men who actually did the fighting for
Speaker 1: his companies did not get rich. Most of executive outcome
Speaker 1: soldiers were black men, veterans of thirty two Battalion or
Speaker 1: Nigerian Special Forces. Many of them were left destitute when
Speaker 1: the company folded, forced to take on menial work as
Speaker 1: security guards and live in Squalor in northwest South Africa.
Speaker 1: They had not benefited from the network of mining companies
Speaker 1: and airlines that filled Man's pockets for the better part
Speaker 1: of a decade. Simon, though got to retire, he competed
Speaker 1: in car races, married a much younger woman, and had
Speaker 1: several kids. He should have been happy, but retirement didn't
Speaker 1: suit Simon Mann, one of his friends, later recalled, I've
Speaker 1: never seen anyone looks so bored. Man's fiftieth birthday came
Speaker 1: and went. He tried to make peace with the fact
Speaker 1: that his exciting youth as a war profiteer was behind him,
Speaker 1: but he just couldn't do it. It's a sad story.
Speaker 1: It is sad. You know, lots of money, younger wife,
Speaker 1: how sad? I mean, you know, I feel bad for
Speaker 1: the guy. Yeah, I mean he has a lot of
Speaker 1: things that you might consider hallmarks of success, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't get to profit off of a war. He doesn't
Speaker 1: get to order men into battle anymore. Well, this is
Speaker 1: like what you were saying, is like how much of
Speaker 1: the bad ship that men do is out of kind
Speaker 1: of boredom or just like wanting to like mix it
Speaker 1: up and have a little fun. And like, you know,
Speaker 1: I do think that that, like evil is definitely part
Speaker 1: of it, But I do think another part of it
Speaker 1: is like just like wanting to do something that is
Speaker 1: exciting and kind of fun, even if it kills people
Speaker 1: and like fox up their lives kind of especially if
Speaker 1: it kills people and their lives, because then there's stick bonus.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, this is why turning Florida into just a
Speaker 1: walled off, open air war zone is such a good
Speaker 1: business idea. I think, and look, nobody has to wear
Speaker 1: masks there. It's it's what's fine. That's COVID nineteen is
Speaker 1: gonna be at least your problem in war Uh yeah, Warida.
Speaker 1: You've already got a name, You've got a Brandon. I
Speaker 1: think I think we gotta do this. I thinks it's
Speaker 1: the fast track. We gotta get this. I bet Governor
Speaker 1: de Santis could get on board with this, you know
Speaker 1: so um. In two thousand three, this aging former mercenary
Speaker 1: board and in need of a challenge, had a fateful
Speaker 1: meeting with a fellow named Eli Khalil, a Lebanese businessman
Speaker 1: and financier with strong ties to the oil and gas industry.
Speaker 1: Now Khalil's eyes had recently turned towards Equatorial Guinea. He
Speaker 1: couldn't help but notice that Exon was paying the nation's dictator,
Speaker 1: Oh Bong just three dollars a barrel, while nearby Nigeria
Speaker 1: got eight dollars a barrel for their field. A savvier
Speaker 1: head of state could negotiate much better terms, opening up
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money to flow into the coffers of
Speaker 1: a guy like Eli Khalil. He started talking to folks
Speaker 1: members of Parliament in the House of Lords who might
Speaker 1: be interested in funding such a venture. In January two
Speaker 1: thousand three, he talked to sign and Man for the
Speaker 1: first time. The two met in London and their talk
Speaker 1: quickly turned to Equatorial Guinea. Now Man knew nothing about
Speaker 1: the country, but Khalil told him he was friends with
Speaker 1: an exiled Guinea and politician, Severo Moto Nasa. Now Moto
Speaker 1: had been a mid level politician and Equatorial Guinea and
Speaker 1: had fled for his life to avoid being murdered by
Speaker 1: the dictator oh Biong. He'd wound up in Madrid, where
Speaker 1: he'd charmed the Spanish Prime Minister and collected a small
Speaker 1: circle of exiled fellow Guineas to him. Moto had become
Speaker 1: the most vocal opponent of Obiang's regime, and Eli Khalil
Speaker 1: later admitted to providing him with modest financial support to
Speaker 1: make his exile comfortable. Now we are talking about very
Speaker 1: powerful men and very serious crimes here, and I cannot
Speaker 1: tell you precisely what happened next. A lot of this
Speaker 1: is just like, this is the likeliest way things happened,
Speaker 1: because nobody who actually knows is talking, or if they're talking,
Speaker 1: they're lying, because again they're talking about overthrowing a government
Speaker 1: and violating international arms embargoes. So again, all of this
Speaker 1: is kind of me putting together from research I've done.
Speaker 1: In the research, primarily Adam Roberts did like what seems
Speaker 1: like the likeliest chain of events that actually occurred, And
Speaker 1: from what I've read, it seems like Eli Halil, basically
Speaker 1: on behalf of himself and other rich guys, found this
Speaker 1: mercenary who was bored and started just talking to him
Speaker 1: about all the terrible things this dictator Obian was doing
Speaker 1: to his people, and also how weak the military there was,
Speaker 1: and how they had this wonderful exiled opposition leader would
Speaker 1: be a great leader in Obion in stead and kind
Speaker 1: of let man put two and two together in his
Speaker 1: own head, like, yeah, you just sort of like lay
Speaker 1: out the bones of the crime, but don't suggest the crime.
Speaker 1: And then this guy Simon Man is like, what if
Speaker 1: we overthrew him? And Eli Halila is like, that's a
Speaker 1: great idea, Simon, that is like how rich guy cry.
Speaker 1: How it happens like where it's like you suggest it
Speaker 1: to someone who like you suggest it and then they
Speaker 1: think it's their idea. That is like t's oldest time
Speaker 1: when it comes to like rich guy crime. If you've
Speaker 1: seen Tiger King, you know what the I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: That is how it goes down. Yeah, that this is
Speaker 1: this is like not like a rare story in history.
Speaker 1: So um yeah. Uh. In his career as a mercenary,
Speaker 1: Man had always worked before for nations. He'd never gotten
Speaker 1: involved in the kind of skullduggery that men like Mad
Speaker 1: Mike Corey got famous for doing. But he'd grown up
Speaker 1: reading the same kind of books as Mad Mike. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm sure he read King Solomon's mind, being a British
Speaker 1: child of that era. Uh, And he'd come into adulthood
Speaker 1: hearing the stories of mercenaries like Cory and Denard. The
Speaker 1: idea of sailing into some horribly oppressed little African country,
Speaker 1: installing his own chosen king and making a big pile
Speaker 1: of lute was deeply appealing to Man, so he started
Speaker 1: to do his own research, and of course he came
Speaker 1: across horror stories of Obiang's cannibalism and all the terrible
Speaker 1: things that he'd done, and he also learned that the
Speaker 1: leader was sick with cancer. This all convinced him that
Speaker 1: to fly to Spain and meet with Moto, just to
Speaker 1: see what he thought of the man. The two had
Speaker 1: a couple of conversations and eventually Motto asked Simon, straight up,
Speaker 1: will you help me take power in Equatorial Guinea. Man
Speaker 1: later recalled that this was the moment he realized he
Speaker 1: was getting involved with a serious game. So Man began
Speaker 1: reaching out to his old friends, including Greg Wales, who
Speaker 1: had worked as a an accountant for executive outcomes, and
Speaker 1: they did enough research to learn that Obiang's army was small,
Speaker 1: usually drunk, and easy pickings for an elite team of
Speaker 1: veteran fighters. In recent interviews, Wales too refers to the
Speaker 1: attempted coup as a game and starts states his belief
Speaker 1: that the government of Spain supported from the beginning. And again,
Speaker 1: all of like the white guys behind this, It's very
Speaker 1: common for them to talk about like this is a game, um,
Speaker 1: because I think that's really how a lot of them
Speaker 1: see it, Like they want to get rich off of this.
Speaker 1: But they also it just it's it's a game. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know it's not a game though for the
Speaker 1: Spanish government. They want Equatorial guineas oil um. And you
Speaker 1: get the feeling that you just kind of pissed that
Speaker 1: they decolonized the country before they knew it had incredibly
Speaker 1: rich oil fields. Um. So there's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that a Spanish oil and gas company
Speaker 1: would have been given access to Equatorial guineas rich fields.
Speaker 1: And if this is true, it means that the Spanish
Speaker 1: government got involved as a way to stealthily recolonized part
Speaker 1: of Equatorial Guinea. So Simon Mann began collecting soldiers, starting
Speaker 1: with a handful of trustworthy white veterans. They tended to
Speaker 1: be executive outcomes men. One of them, Style had flown
Speaker 1: from man in Angola. He transitioned to a peaceful and
Speaker 1: lucrative career as the private pilot for a billionaire. So
Speaker 1: Style is and again he's a white guy. He's doing
Speaker 1: incredibly well. He's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Speaker 1: He's like getting to live in luxury hotels and party
Speaker 1: with a billionaire all the time. He doesn't need the money.
Speaker 1: But his old friend comes out to him and says, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to fly a bunch of men into
Speaker 1: battle to help overthrow this dictator? And style is like
Speaker 1: fuck yeah, and he's like fun, yeah, because it sounds fun.
Speaker 1: Like that's the reason he gives is that it sounds
Speaker 1: like it'll be a neat time. Um. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about like like people who do shitty
Speaker 1: things when they don't need the money, they just like
Speaker 1: are kind of reckless and like are up for up
Speaker 1: for like a good time. Do you know. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like you didn't need to do this, but you're
Speaker 1: just like kind of a reckless person and you were bored. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why you did it. As another mercenary who
Speaker 1: was approached to the job told the author of the
Speaker 1: book the Wonga Cou quote, you can see why this
Speaker 1: is tempting. It's fun, it could work. You trust the leaders.
Speaker 1: Some of the guys did it for the kicks because
Speaker 1: life is boring. Wow, exactly. At least they're at least
Speaker 1: they're open about it. Where it's like like this boring,
Speaker 1: they're very open about it. Yeah, it's it's awesome. Actually,
Speaker 1: I mean no, it's not it's horrible but interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the bulk of the men who were recruited by
Speaker 1: man Um, the guys who were like the cannon fodder
Speaker 1: for this operation, were of course Black soldiers. Buffalo soldiers
Speaker 1: is the term you'll hear for these guys, the veterans
Speaker 1: of the thirty two Battalion in South Africa. And these
Speaker 1: men's stories were saturday. They were not doing it for fun.
Speaker 1: Most of them lived in a place called Pomfrey, which
Speaker 1: had been the military base they'd been bunked in when
Speaker 1: they'd been in the South African military and was now
Speaker 1: when old asbestos filled slum that they lived in with
Speaker 1: their families in horrific squalor Adam Roberts rights quote. Families
Speaker 1: told of husbands and fathers who scrabbled at the chance
Speaker 1: of well paid work, no questions asked. At one house,
Speaker 1: a wooden carving on the wall shows a lion eating
Speaker 1: a man with a gun. Cecilia Chimoisha says that her father, Edwardo,
Speaker 1: fought as a buffalo soldier for the South Africans for
Speaker 1: nearly two decades. He received a small army pension and
Speaker 1: took a job as a security garden Pretoria, leaving his
Speaker 1: family behind because there's no jobs in Pomfrey. Pomfrey is
Speaker 1: only full of humans, there's no jobs. He was working
Speaker 1: in Pretoria, his contract had finished, and he came home
Speaker 1: for Christmas and New Year. When he returned to Practoria,
Speaker 1: he met a guy at an association for people who
Speaker 1: were in Battalion thirty two, a hostel. Then he phoned
Speaker 1: us and said that he was going to Congo, And
Speaker 1: most of the accounts of the black men, who again
Speaker 1: are the majority of the fighting for it here, are
Speaker 1: the same. There offered jobs that paid more than their
Speaker 1: current work and offer maybe the possibility of an escape
Speaker 1: from poverty while still being a pittance of what Eli
Speaker 1: Khalil and Simon Mann planned to make in the operation quote.
Speaker 1: Friends recruited each other, cousins urged relatives to join, hoping
Speaker 1: to bring more wages into the family. The signs of
Speaker 1: misery and palm frey, broken windows, sandy Street strewn with
Speaker 1: litter all help explain the readiness of men to border
Speaker 1: plane for an ill defined military job. Many of the
Speaker 1: foot soldiers and their families later claimed ignorance of the
Speaker 1: coup plot. Perhaps they were not told, at least not
Speaker 1: early on. And there's a good chance that most of
Speaker 1: these men, up until like the day they were supposed
Speaker 1: to carry out this coup, didn't really know what they
Speaker 1: were being brought in for. Um. So recruiting these black soldiers,
Speaker 1: who were again expected to do almost all of the
Speaker 1: fighting and killing, was basically an after thought thought for
Speaker 1: Simon Mann. He devoted most of his pre coup efforts
Speaker 1: to recruiting rich white guys to provide funding for the
Speaker 1: whole escapade. He did this by throwing a series of
Speaker 1: fancy parties that is Johannesburg home. According to an attendee
Speaker 1: at one of these parties, interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph, quote,
Speaker 1: it was a casual conversation at a drinks party around
Speaker 1: a swimming pool about a security project in an African mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: First of all, I love this accent you're doing, and
Speaker 1: I say that. Um. Also, this sounds terrible and they
Speaker 1: did terrible things. This Johannesburg pool party sounds kind of lit.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna yeah, I I have. I have gone
Speaker 1: drinking at parties that are heavily mercenary, attended a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and you drink a lot. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: drink a lot with private military contractors. Although the drunkest
Speaker 1: people at the party were the U n UM. They
Speaker 1: actually like fucking parked illegally and we were going to
Speaker 1: get the party busted and we had to like find
Speaker 1: the drunken U n guys and steal their keys to
Speaker 1: move the land rover. It was fucking night. Wait, why
Speaker 1: is this not a podcast episode? You're doing story? It's
Speaker 1: a fun tale. You are you got up? We got
Speaker 1: you can get up to some ship in Iraq? Yeah
Speaker 1: so um yeah. So he hosts these these pool parties
Speaker 1: where he talks to people. They're just having drinks and
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, we're having a project to mine.
Speaker 1: You know, it'll be a quick profit if you're willing
Speaker 1: to invest some money. And then, you know, most people are,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as he mentions that the project
Speaker 1: is an equatorial guinea, most reasonable people are like, oh fun, No,
Speaker 1: I have no interest in getting involved in business in
Speaker 1: that company, Like it's way in that country, it's way
Speaker 1: too unstable. Um. But the people who are interested. Man
Speaker 1: then has like private one on one conversations with Um
Speaker 1: and he asked him to put up a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in seed money and promises them a million dollar
Speaker 1: return inside of ten weeks. Now, I'm not an investment guru,
Speaker 1: but I know some people who are good at investments,
Speaker 1: and one thing they'll all say is that if anyone
Speaker 1: is offering you returns like that really returns an excess
Speaker 1: of like five, ten, maybe fifteen percent, um, Like, that's good.
Speaker 1: If someone's offering you ten times return in ten weeks,
Speaker 1: that's a scam. They're either going to steal your money
Speaker 1: or they're committing some sort of horrible crime. And this
Speaker 1: is the horrible crime type thing, right Like, somebody either
Speaker 1: either somebody is getting scammed or there's a terrible fucking
Speaker 1: like a legal thing going on. For sure, it's either
Speaker 1: heroin or a coup, right Like, if they're not just
Speaker 1: going to take your money and run, it's heroin or
Speaker 1: a coup. Yeah. So, um, a number of people invested,
Speaker 1: but a much larger number wound up spreading rumors around
Speaker 1: town about the coup that man was planning. Because again,
Speaker 1: he tries to stay secret about this, but he's bad
Speaker 1: at it, and he just starts like telling anyone who says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I might invest money, like yes, we're gonna overthrow this government.
Speaker 1: So like he's simultaneously these black soldiers that they're expecting
Speaker 1: to do the fighting don't know what they're getting involved in.
Speaker 1: And like every random white dude that Simon man gets
Speaker 1: drunk at here's about his plan to overthrow the government
Speaker 1: of Equatorial Guinea. Like it so funny, Like this actually
Speaker 1: reminds me of when we were at that when we
Speaker 1: were talking about like Nazis, how I was so surprised
Speaker 1: by how many of them had. Like we're taken down
Speaker 1: by personal messiness that you think you would be some
Speaker 1: like a dictator or like someone who is committed to
Speaker 1: threading awfulness and like shittiness in the world, and then
Speaker 1: you get taken down by your own messiness. It's like again,
Speaker 1: like you got drunk and told everybody like that that
Speaker 1: really tells you all you need to know. Don't you
Speaker 1: think that that is what separates the bad people who
Speaker 1: are terrible but ultimately just foot soldiers, to the really
Speaker 1: danger The really dangerous people are people like Eli Khalil,
Speaker 1: like the guy at the top of all this who
Speaker 1: was smart enough to be like this Simon guy is
Speaker 1: going to try to do this, and he's going to
Speaker 1: be incompetent and messy. But as long as I like
Speaker 1: steer clear just enough that I can't be legally tied
Speaker 1: to him, this might work out. If it does, I
Speaker 1: make a bunch of money. If it doesn't, I'm out,
Speaker 1: what you know, a hundred grand or two. He's the
Speaker 1: one gathering most of the funds anyway, Like, those are
Speaker 1: the people you have to fucking watch out for. Is
Speaker 1: that you like Halil's like the Simon Man's funk up
Speaker 1: a bunch of ship, but they're usually too dumb to
Speaker 1: get most of what they want because they're just they're
Speaker 1: they're messy. Yeah, Samon Man is messy. Listen, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna be if you're gonna be involved in like like
Speaker 1: dirty ship, don't get drunk and tell everybody that's Like
Speaker 1: that's like a number one rule. Yeah, Like, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna be a dealer, don't smoke your own stash. And
Speaker 1: if you're going to plot coup's stay sober until the
Speaker 1: coup's done. That's what fucking Bob Denard did, right, They
Speaker 1: brought the champagne. They didn't drink the champagne before the coup.
Speaker 1: Mike Corean is men did and they got into an
Speaker 1: airport gunfight. Drinking getting wasted before the coup means an
Speaker 1: airport gunfight. Getting wasted after the coup means a fun evening.
Speaker 1: Like it's not hard. I almost I almost feel like
Speaker 1: you're like giving people the recipe, like launch a successful coup,
Speaker 1: get drunk after those Venezuelan guys who got busted, they
Speaker 1: were on a boat, you know, they were getting drunk
Speaker 1: on that boat, like, yeah, fucking idiots. And of course
Speaker 1: it was like most of the actual dying was done
Speaker 1: by like these local Venezuelans who just wanted to be
Speaker 1: freed by a shitty dictator. These white guys wanted to
Speaker 1: be heroes. It's fucking bullshit. It's so frustrating. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll suffer real penalties for what they did, because
Speaker 1: funk those guys, Uh, Like, it's so such bullshit. It's
Speaker 1: always such bullshit. So man was not secretive about what
Speaker 1: he was proposing to do. Obviously, he slipped up constantly
Speaker 1: in the drinking parties. Um. And you know, while a
Speaker 1: small number of people invested, a much larger number of
Speaker 1: the people that he talked to wound up just spreading
Speaker 1: rumors around town that Simon Mann was planning a coup.
Speaker 1: South African intelligence found out about it almost instantly and
Speaker 1: wrote out multiple different reports about the Button coup in
Speaker 1: the months before it was attempted. So like South African
Speaker 1: authorities like right away know what's going on. Um Now,
Speaker 1: it's like really that Simon Mann himself was well aware
Speaker 1: that the gist of his plan was known to local authorities,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't seem to have cared much. There's debate
Speaker 1: as to why, but the likeliest explanation is that he
Speaker 1: just didn't think anyone would bother to stop him. He
Speaker 1: thought that Obiang was such a bad dictator and international
Speaker 1: law was so lax that nothing would happen um. And
Speaker 1: he had good reason to think this. Um. His partner Wales,
Speaker 1: had reached out to an American lobbyist, Joe Sala, who
Speaker 1: advised them that a four day program of introductions to
Speaker 1: US officials could be arranged for Motto, the guy they
Speaker 1: wanted to put in place as the new dictator, for
Speaker 1: just forty grand And we don't know exactly what kind
Speaker 1: of deal Whales worked out with Sala for Motto, but
Speaker 1: the two talked regularly for months and when man purchased
Speaker 1: a former Coastguard Boeing seven for the United States to
Speaker 1: use in his coup. The whole process of buying this
Speaker 1: former military aircraft and shipping it to South Africa went
Speaker 1: really smoothly, like weirdly smoothly, and there are there's no
Speaker 1: hard evidence, but there's a lot of people who think
Speaker 1: that someone, if not a US government at the top level,
Speaker 1: people in the US government knew about this button coup
Speaker 1: and wanted to kind of help it along a little
Speaker 1: bit by letting them get access to this plane more easily. Again,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that people at the top did
Speaker 1: know that. George Bush was like, yeah, funk it, let's
Speaker 1: see what happens. Who knows. Yeah, I honestly wouldn't put
Speaker 1: it past him, like that does sound like something he
Speaker 1: would do and what it also might have been due
Speaker 1: to the Spanish government asking the US government to help
Speaker 1: things out here because Spain again had a massive financial
Speaker 1: interest in this. The Spanish government did because they wanted
Speaker 1: to get access to Equatorial Guineas oil, and Spain had
Speaker 1: backed the U S and the invasion of Iraq, which
Speaker 1: was like the Spanish leadership had backed the U S
Speaker 1: and the invasion of Iraq, which is a very politically
Speaker 1: dicey decision, to say the least, and there's suspicions that
Speaker 1: basically the Prime Minister of Spain was like, look, George
Speaker 1: w Bush, like, when you wanted to go to war,
Speaker 1: we helped you out. Now I want to overthrow a
Speaker 1: dictator and take some oil, Like let's get some quid
Speaker 1: pro quo going up in this bitch. Um. So you
Speaker 1: know you can't I can't say enough. This is two
Speaker 1: thousand three and two thousand four, like yeah, so um.
Speaker 1: Wales was responsible for also putting together most of the
Speaker 1: non military aspects of the scheme. He set the day
Speaker 1: of the actual event for a Thursday or a Friday,
Speaker 1: because those were the days that most ministers would be
Speaker 1: in the capital in Malabo and Equatorial Guinea. The coup
Speaker 1: plotters would then have the weekend to consolidate their power
Speaker 1: and reopen the country on Monday. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the was the goal is, like we overthrow the government
Speaker 1: on Friday, we like work through the weekend, and then
Speaker 1: by Monday we got the whole new country set up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like the way they think it seems
Speaker 1: it sounds very efficient and that within the way the plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, yeah, that makes sense. That scans um. So
Speaker 1: he had plans to get the National press such as
Speaker 1: it was in line and put together and quote impressive
Speaker 1: plans for social, political, medical, and economic improvements for the
Speaker 1: general populace um that he was going to have motto
Speaker 1: announced on the monday he took power. Now, none of
Speaker 1: these plans would actually be implemented, but that would get
Speaker 1: like just talking about it would get the world off
Speaker 1: of their backs long enough to suck Equatorial Guinea dry.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from the book the Wonga Coup. Quote.
Speaker 1: By the turn of the year Wales, his ideas and
Speaker 1: presumably Man's, had expanded to something grander and Equatorial Guinea.
Speaker 1: He proposed forming a company controlled by Man and his
Speaker 1: closest plotters to run Equatorial Guinea, with Moto as a
Speaker 1: puppet leader. The English accountant had long liked to dream
Speaker 1: up plans and models for how to run failing countries.
Speaker 1: He says he has written other proposals for other companies
Speaker 1: modeled on the old buccaneering firms that underwrote British imperial
Speaker 1: expansion in India and Africa. He thinks Somalia and Gabon
Speaker 1: should be run by boards of directors, not by governments
Speaker 1: or warlords. So he wrote a lengthy document, the Bite
Speaker 1: of Benin Company Document, describing how such men such a
Speaker 1: company could take power and run the oil rich West
Speaker 1: African state. John Smith believed the document shows how the
Speaker 1: coup plot was pure neo colonialism. To put Motto in
Speaker 1: place so they can remove him in any time. Simon
Speaker 1: would have been the president's security advisor and his company,
Speaker 1: the Bite of Benin Company, would have controlled it all. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the plan. That's suck up. It's super fucked up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's real bad. You shouldn't do that, shouldn't shouldn't do
Speaker 1: that at all. By the way, the name the Wonga
Speaker 1: coup comes from a letter that I believe it was
Speaker 1: Mark Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher's son um was one of the
Speaker 1: backers of this plan, and he got He got in
Speaker 1: legal trouble for it eventually, and again the exact dimensions
Speaker 1: to which he was involved aren't known. It kind of
Speaker 1: looks like he just gave them some money, knowing vaguely
Speaker 1: that they were going to funk up some ship in
Speaker 1: Africa and maybe make a lot of money. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so Margaret Thatcher's kid like h Simon Mann writes him
Speaker 1: a letter when he needs more money and refers to
Speaker 1: the money that he needs as wonga, which is like
Speaker 1: upper classs rich British kids slang for cash. Um like
Speaker 1: it's what Etonian boys called cat like some wonga? What
Speaker 1: of the wonga? Whatever? Fucking bullshit, fancy rich British kid stupid.
Speaker 1: I hope that you do. I hope that you do
Speaker 1: your like rich British kid accent A hundred more times
Speaker 1: in this episode. Very happy. I'll do my best. Can
Speaker 1: you do that voice to call to an ad Brick?
Speaker 1: Just won? Oh? God? Alright, alright, speaking of colonialism and wonga,
Speaker 1: speaking of wonga. He'll get this show somewhere. I went
Speaker 1: Australian right away, like I immediately, like Beard in Australian territory.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say anything, but it's very Australian.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, I know. I could
Speaker 1: do a pretty good Irish accent. Yeah I do what Irish?
Speaker 1: That's a Irish boy faith? And why don't you check
Speaker 1: out these odds? Now? Give this man a raise? Good?
Speaker 1: That was so good not even please HOI you toy
Speaker 1: t tidy Tom. We're back from the odd brick. It's
Speaker 1: the Irish behind the Bostard's episode that really is, like,
Speaker 1: I guess that's I don't know what kind of colonialism
Speaker 1: it is when you try to make fun of rich
Speaker 1: British people but you're bad at the accent, so you
Speaker 1: just make fun of another colonialized oppressed people, the Irish. Instead.
Speaker 1: You're like, I wanted to make fun of them, but
Speaker 1: now the Irish are getting pulled into it somehow. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm so sorry Ireland. Um, you didn't deserve that.
Speaker 1: You're a wonderful country. So the Bite of Bening company
Speaker 1: document shows the plotters fretting that oil firms may not
Speaker 1: play ball after the coup. They were worried that, like, um,
Speaker 1: basically that some of these international companies would be like,
Speaker 1: you illegally overthrew a government and maybe we don't want
Speaker 1: to do business with you, which is weird because it
Speaker 1: means that these coup plotters had way more faith in
Speaker 1: the morality of oil company executives than anyone on earth
Speaker 1: ever has. Um. Yeah, so, uh, they were worried about
Speaker 1: this because if oil revenue stopped flowing. You know, there
Speaker 1: was no point in taking control of Equatorial Guinea, which
Speaker 1: again shows that they did not care about overthrowing this dictator.
Speaker 1: But they knew that there were regular direct flights between
Speaker 1: Malabo and Houston, UM because you know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of American interest in Equatorial Guinea. UM, and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to like piss off the United States because
Speaker 1: if they messed with the oil interests at all and
Speaker 1: like damaged the business interests of any of these companies
Speaker 1: actively mining Equatorial Guinea, that would get the Marines in.
Speaker 1: Like that was like literally like the writing they wrote,
Speaker 1: like this is what gets the Marines in. UM. So
Speaker 1: they had to assure the American government early on, and
Speaker 1: that was something they like wrote into their plan. UM.
Speaker 1: They figured that like the best way to do this
Speaker 1: was to offer lucrative jobs to American private security firms UM.
Speaker 1: And they decided that like one way to do this
Speaker 1: was to offer the Military Professional Resources Incorporated mpr I
Speaker 1: company the job of guarding the new president once the
Speaker 1: government was overthrown. So they like are immediately thinking, how
Speaker 1: do we bribe the US into not stopping us from
Speaker 1: doing this? UM. Yeah, the bite have been in company.
Speaker 1: Document is proof positive against any claims that humanitarian concerns
Speaker 1: were a factor in the coup. Under its strictures, the
Speaker 1: coup plotters would have total control over the new president's
Speaker 1: schedule and what contracts he was allowed to sign. The
Speaker 1: plotters were well aware of the fact that Equatorial guineas
Speaker 1: first dictator Macias had initially been a figurehead for the
Speaker 1: Spanish government. They would not allow this to happen again.
Speaker 1: The document itself notes, quote, the two most potent general
Speaker 1: threats are one. As it is potentially a very lucrative game,
Speaker 1: we should expect bad behavior, disloyalty, rampant individual greed, a
Speaker 1: rational behavior, kids in toy shop style, backstabbing, bum fucking,
Speaker 1: and similar ungentlemanly activities too. If the result is not
Speaker 1: seen by the outside world is noticeably better than the
Speaker 1: current situation, our position there and uh in anything other
Speaker 1: than the very short term will be hard to sustain,
Speaker 1: and our involvement will be more likely to be the
Speaker 1: subject of unfavorable scrutinty. So that's really the wording on
Speaker 1: this is fascinating to me, Like because there's so number
Speaker 1: one they call it a game again, but also because
Speaker 1: there's gonna be so much money at stake, we should
Speaker 1: expect everyone to act badly, Like we have to assume
Speaker 1: everyone's going to be a piece of ship that's involved
Speaker 1: in this plan that we're cooking up. Yeah, everyone's going
Speaker 1: to act like a child at a toy store. And
Speaker 1: then also for I do think referring to it as
Speaker 1: a game, it really shows you, like what they were
Speaker 1: thinking that they like don't understand this sort of steaks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't. And it's is like this is StarCraft for
Speaker 1: rich people, Like that's what this is. Is like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's fucking wild. So the biggest issue facing the
Speaker 1: plotters was the problem of acquiring weaponry UM and a
Speaker 1: lot is said stereotypically about how easy it is to
Speaker 1: acquire guns in Africa, but that's actually not as true
Speaker 1: as people think. For one thing, there's fewer firearms and
Speaker 1: the entire African continent than in the United States, probably
Speaker 1: a lot fewer, because the US has roughly half of
Speaker 1: all the world's guns. UM in South Africa, probably the
Speaker 1: most heavily armed nation on the continent, roughly ten out
Speaker 1: of one hundred people own a gun. In the United States,
Speaker 1: there are one dred sixteen firearms for every human being.
Speaker 1: That's just private guns too. By the way, UM, Now,
Speaker 1: there are places in Africa where you can buy an
Speaker 1: a K forty seven for cheap, generally places that have
Speaker 1: just finished having civil wars or coups or whatever. But
Speaker 1: that's not the case everywhere, and just being able to
Speaker 1: buy an a K forty seven doesn't mean you can
Speaker 1: actually get access to high quality arms. Coup plotters needed
Speaker 1: not just random street a ks. They needed good, reliable guns,
Speaker 1: and they needed things other than a K forty sevens.
Speaker 1: They needed hand grenades, heavy machine guns, mortars, mortar ammunition,
Speaker 1: and rocket launchers. All of this ship is necessary if
Speaker 1: you're going to overthrow even a small modern government. Um
Speaker 1: and that stuff is hard to fucking get, especially in
Speaker 1: the quantities that you need. Man eventually worked at a
Speaker 1: deal with an arms manufacturer, Zimbabwe Defense Industries z d I. Now,
Speaker 1: he had no end user certificate, which is what you
Speaker 1: need to arm a large group of people without breaking
Speaker 1: international law, but he did have bribe money. Z d
Speaker 1: I didn't want to just deliver weapons to Man in
Speaker 1: his army in their own country though, because they legally
Speaker 1: couldn't ship them to him going to handle all these
Speaker 1: logistical hurdles. Man and the other plotters set up an
Speaker 1: incredibly complex and stupid scheme. The short of it is
Speaker 1: that they bought a bunch of extra guns from z
Speaker 1: d I to have delivered for rebels that they knew
Speaker 1: in the Congo, and they were going to have these
Speaker 1: rebels attack and take an air strip from the government
Speaker 1: of the Congo. The z d I plane would then
Speaker 1: fly into the Congo, land at that air strip and
Speaker 1: unload a bunch of guns to pay the rebels and
Speaker 1: to give Man's army, which they would then fly into
Speaker 1: Zambia to give to their fighters. So like, we're already
Speaker 1: over complicating things, right, like every every other complication is
Speaker 1: that is another way for things to fail. Like this
Speaker 1: is like we haven't even like the steps before we
Speaker 1: even land an army in fucking Eduatorial Guinea are such
Speaker 1: a fucking mess. It's clearly a bad idea. So Man's
Speaker 1: forward team would meet with these rebels and then fly
Speaker 1: to Zambia, where the bulk of the mercenaries would be waiting.
Speaker 1: They'd load up their arms and then fly to Equatorial
Speaker 1: Guinea to carry out their coup. A separate group of
Speaker 1: mercenaries arding future present Moto would land by boats supported
Speaker 1: by a small squadron of Spanish frigates, which would be
Speaker 1: there to secure naval supremacy. Now in war, as in life,
Speaker 1: simple plans are always better than complicated ones, and Man's
Speaker 1: convoluted coup scheme collapsed before it really got started. The
Speaker 1: Congolese rebels failed to capture the airstrip and probably never
Speaker 1: even tried to assault it. The z d I plane
Speaker 1: had no place to land, so it flew back to Harare.
Speaker 1: The Spanish frigates sailed off when it became clear that
Speaker 1: no coup was going to occur, and in general, the
Speaker 1: whole scheme diet fizzled. And in fact, even the plane
Speaker 1: that the Man's advanced team flew from the Congo to
Speaker 1: Zambia like it hit a bird in midflight and had
Speaker 1: to be emergency repaired. It just it falls apart fucking immediately,
Speaker 1: and most of Man's army just spends the whek getting
Speaker 1: drunk in fancy hotels. Um. So, not not a great
Speaker 1: first try, not a great first try. But is it
Speaker 1: fun to get drunk in fancy hotels? It is? It
Speaker 1: is uh and a lot of of the guys who
Speaker 1: were getting drunk in those hotels would go on too
Speaker 1: wish that they just stayed in the hotels getting drunk. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine if that's all they did where they were just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just I just went to this hotel, got drunk,
Speaker 1: and then I like stayed there. I'm at home. Cous
Speaker 1: are awesome. So after this inauspicious cluster fox, several of
Speaker 1: the coup's early backers backed out, wisely, deciding that Man
Speaker 1: and his fellow mercenaries were a lot worse at overthrowing
Speaker 1: corrupt regimes than they'd been at propping them up. But
Speaker 1: Simon Mann had the coup plotting equivalent of blue balls,
Speaker 1: and he was not the kind of man who was
Speaker 1: gonna let a little thing like rank failures stop him.
Speaker 1: He committed to trying again and started pounding the ground
Speaker 1: in search of yet more funding. This was not an
Speaker 1: easy process, and in interviews Man's friends noted that he
Speaker 1: was visibly uneasy by late February two thousand four. Quote
Speaker 1: he looked under huge emotional pressure, recalls one who saw
Speaker 1: him regularly. Matters were not helped by Amanda, his free
Speaker 1: spending wife. On one occasion, he lost it. He threw
Speaker 1: the phone ten ms at a wall and it smashed
Speaker 1: to a thousand bits to somebody who worked in his office.
Speaker 1: The reason, on top of the stress of finding cash
Speaker 1: for his coup, he had to provide ever more dollars
Speaker 1: to his wife. Man could afford it in the longer term,
Speaker 1: but he lacked ready cash. His wife and children used
Speaker 1: to luxury were running up bills just as he needed
Speaker 1: every dollar. And it's it's a whole another level of
Speaker 1: self absorbed when you're angry at your wife and kids
Speaker 1: for spending money not because you don't have it, because
Speaker 1: you need it to overthrow a sovereign nation to steal
Speaker 1: it's oil. It's like, baby, don't you understand I need this.
Speaker 1: I need this money for the coup. I need this
Speaker 1: for the coup. That's my coup bucks. She's like you,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a facial Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like
Speaker 1: like normal like middle class guys who are the kind
Speaker 1: of man Simon man is when they get old, like
Speaker 1: spend too much money buying like a shitty convertible, Simon
Speaker 1: launches a coup. That's really what is going on here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like, are you gonna buy a like midlife crisis
Speaker 1: car or execute a Q whichever yeah one of the two.
Speaker 1: So um yeah he uh. He starts to get desperate,
Speaker 1: right um, because he's having trouble raising enough money, and
Speaker 1: like all desperate men, he cuts corners. And the fact
Speaker 1: that he was cutting corners in his attempted a second
Speaker 1: attempted a coup is embodied nowhere better than the story
Speaker 1: of how Man planned to collect his zimbabwe and weapons
Speaker 1: the second time around. Rather than set up a drop
Speaker 1: in another country, he just decided to fly his seven
Speaker 1: seven loaded with mercenaries into Zimbabwe and pick up the
Speaker 1: guns there. Now, these guns were being bought illegally, and
Speaker 1: the mercenaries were also illegal. Um so. This introduced a
Speaker 1: number of wrinkles into the plan. Now Man and his
Speaker 1: soldiers were going to be landing in another sovereign nation
Speaker 1: and buying illegal weapons, which is a whole new list
Speaker 1: of people you have to bribe. Like smuggling an army
Speaker 1: all the way across Africa is not an easy thing
Speaker 1: to do, um so, but Man decides, fuck it, we'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. On Arch fourth, a small advanced team
Speaker 1: flew into Equatorial guineas Capital. Their role would be to
Speaker 1: set things up for when the full army arrived. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: for them, Obiang and his government were well aware of
Speaker 1: what was about to happen. For one thing, the South
Speaker 1: African government had warned them in detail that Simon Mann
Speaker 1: was planning a coup. For another thing, before the first
Speaker 1: coup attempt, Man had sent an advanced team into Equatorial Guinea.
Speaker 1: They've gotten drunk in one of the capital's few restaurants
Speaker 1: and talked openly about their plans to overthrow the government.
Speaker 1: So there's a number of reasons that Obiang knows what's
Speaker 1: about to happen again, like getting drunk, and like getting
Speaker 1: drunken talkie if you're if you're planning a coup, If
Speaker 1: you're out there listening and you're planning a coup, don't
Speaker 1: get drunken talkie. After Bridget and I will have a
Speaker 1: lot more coup advice in our new podcast, How to Coup,
Speaker 1: which launches on the I Heart network this August, so
Speaker 1: you can wherever you get your podcast, how did you Yeah?
Speaker 1: If you're stockpiling F A L S and three oh
Speaker 1: eight mm o in hopes of overthrowing I don't know Uruguay,
Speaker 1: don't do it. Until you listen to our podcast, because
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a lot of advice for you. We
Speaker 1: should call it the A b C's for always be couping.
Speaker 1: You gotta be learning your A b c s. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're going to carry out a coup, the including
Speaker 1: d don't drink um. That really is the number one
Speaker 1: lesson I've gotten. Like that is like the undoing of
Speaker 1: so many people in this story. It's like getting and honestly,
Speaker 1: like these are horrible, horrible people. I want to make
Speaker 1: it very clear, they're terrible. Fuck them all, But I
Speaker 1: kind of I've been there where you like, have a plan,
Speaker 1: you have a few drinks, you're feeling good. You start
Speaker 1: talking like, I don't know how it happens. Oh, we
Speaker 1: could call our podcast get a Coup. Oh that's good, dude,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. That's a good one. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be a great show. Gonna be a great show. We'll
Speaker 1: have to have Simon man on. Thank you so uh.
Speaker 1: When the point team flew in on March fourth, Obiang
Speaker 1: was ready um and still the coup plotters and the
Speaker 1: advanced team member Nicki took steps to try to conceal
Speaker 1: the fact that we're about to execute a coup. So
Speaker 1: Nick Deta is like the head of the advanced team
Speaker 1: that lands in Equatorial Guinea a head of the second attempt,
Speaker 1: and as soon as he lands, he gets the impression
Speaker 1: that the government might be aware that they're about to
Speaker 1: carry out a coup. And his response to this is
Speaker 1: to send out a bunch of text messages on his phone,
Speaker 1: which he was sure was bugged, stating, hey, guys were
Speaker 1: canceling the coup. Not because he was canceling the coupe
Speaker 1: because he caught that. We thought that would throw the
Speaker 1: government off of their trail. I kind of love that
Speaker 1: smart people here. So just as the Spanish government hoped
Speaker 1: a successful coup would allow them to profit from Equatorial
Speaker 1: Guineas oil, South Africa felt that stopping the coup would
Speaker 1: help them profit off Equatorial Guineas oil. So, in addition
Speaker 1: to warning young South Africa put in a call to
Speaker 1: Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe now and they were like, Hey,
Speaker 1: a bunch of mercenaries led by a British guy are
Speaker 1: going to be picking up a legal arms at your airport.
Speaker 1: Maybe do something about it. And Mugabe didn't really care
Speaker 1: that much about Equatorial guineas sovereignty. But he was, above
Speaker 1: all else terrified of Britain, which is the most reasonable
Speaker 1: thing about Robert Mugabe. And he and many of them
Speaker 1: in his government were worried that their old colonial oppressor
Speaker 1: was plotting at coup against Zimbabwe. So when they hear
Speaker 1: that a British mercenary is about to land in their
Speaker 1: country and pick up a pile of guns, they're not
Speaker 1: worried about Equatorial Guinea. They're worried that he's going to
Speaker 1: try to overthrow his own country. So, to make a
Speaker 1: very long and dumb story short, man lands in Harare
Speaker 1: with the bulk of his army and they all get
Speaker 1: arrested before they can even so much as pick up
Speaker 1: their guns. His advanced team is also arrested. In Equatorial Guinea,
Speaker 1: both groups of mercenaries mercenaries are thrown into horrible prisons
Speaker 1: and tortured. One man dies under torture in each country. UM.
Speaker 1: Now in Zimbabwe, man and his mercenaries are all tried,
Speaker 1: convicted and sentenced to prison. Um Most of the grunts
Speaker 1: got a year with no time served for the six
Speaker 1: months had already been incarcerted pre trial. So all these
Speaker 1: poor black eyes just get no money and are in
Speaker 1: jail for eighteen months. Um. Yeah, most of the white
Speaker 1: men got sixteen months sentences. They all get fined two
Speaker 1: thousands Zimbabwe dollars each, which comes to about thirty cents,
Speaker 1: so at least the fine isn't too much. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Man himself was sentenced to seven years and forfeited both
Speaker 1: the plane he bought in a hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in cash. He also missed the birth of his
Speaker 1: seventh child, which happened the same month that he was sentenced.
Speaker 1: H this was a mild penalty compared to the suffering
Speaker 1: experience by the families of the black soldiers. Man had
Speaker 1: led into this stupid disaster because Man's family at least
Speaker 1: was still rich. According to Lawonga Coup quote, Viviana Chimuchi,
Speaker 1: wife of Eduardo who's one of the men, was desperate.
Speaker 1: We attended. We depend on people who have pity and
Speaker 1: on the churches we get food parcels. She explains. Her
Speaker 1: daughter Cecilia says, we heard the sentence of my father
Speaker 1: on the radio that we were We were surprised. They
Speaker 1: told us he would come out now tears appear in
Speaker 1: her eyes. She blames man in the financiers. Those people
Speaker 1: put us into trouble. We're suffering because they put our
Speaker 1: father into problems. She once man punished. I'm happy not
Speaker 1: to give him seven years, no to give him the
Speaker 1: death penalty he deserves it. Wow powerful words. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, like yeah, man
Speaker 1: and his fellow white guys, they all do suffer. Like
Speaker 1: they spend time in a really shitty prison and man,
Speaker 1: a couple of them get tortured. Um, but the fucking
Speaker 1: these these poor black dudes who probably didn't even really
Speaker 1: know what they were being paid to do in detail, uh,
Speaker 1: suffer the worst. And all of the white guys when
Speaker 1: they do get out of prison, have our rich still,
Speaker 1: and all of these black guys their families are poorer
Speaker 1: than ever. It's it's some bullshit. It's so sad like that,
Speaker 1: like what you've just described, I feel like is such
Speaker 1: a blueprint for so many things, where white guys go
Speaker 1: into this, they come out of it and they're fine,
Speaker 1: and then the people that that kind of like go
Speaker 1: along with it, who are more oft than than not
Speaker 1: black just have nothing. And it's just it's it's it's
Speaker 1: makes me, it's it's it's very upsetting, and I think
Speaker 1: it's like a common thing when we talk about Yes,
Speaker 1: it is by far the normal way for this ship
Speaker 1: to go. So Man and his fellow whites had enough
Speaker 1: money to pay bribes that made their lives behind bars easier.
Speaker 1: Zimbabwe in prison is never comfortable, but they were able
Speaker 1: to secure themselves enough food to stay relatively healthy, as
Speaker 1: well as a few luxuries. The same was not true
Speaker 1: for the black men that they'd planned to lead into battle.
Speaker 1: Those men spent their year behind bars on the edge
Speaker 1: of starvation. When they were freed, they found themselves in debt,
Speaker 1: nursing criminal records, and tired by their toxic affiliations to
Speaker 1: one of the most disastrous coups in history. Simon Mann, however,
Speaker 1: was it extradited to Equatorial Guinea after four years in
Speaker 1: the Zimbabwe in prison, and it is widely believed that
Speaker 1: he was traded by Zimbabwe for oil. He went on
Speaker 1: to spend another eighteen month the Equatorial guineas notorious Black
Speaker 1: Beach Prison. Before his extradition, President Obiang had promised to
Speaker 1: personally sodomize and skin alive the mercenary, but he didn't actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't really do that. Um. It was bad though.
Speaker 1: Man was tortured horribly and locked in solitary confinement. He
Speaker 1: was beaten and starved. I'm not gonna say he suffered
Speaker 1: a fair punishment, but he was. He was punished like
Speaker 1: he has. He spends like years in unspeakable misery and torment.
Speaker 1: So you know, at least there's that. Uh. Yeah. During
Speaker 1: his time incarcerated, he was allowed to speak to journalists
Speaker 1: provided he telled them that he was being treated very well.
Speaker 1: And you can find interviews from him and like the
Speaker 1: mid aughts where he's talking about like, no, I haven't
Speaker 1: been tortured. Everything's good here. When he got out of
Speaker 1: prison in two thousand ten, he started being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was absolutely tortured and he's probably not lying like
Speaker 1: he almost certainly was tortured. Um. But yeah. One of
Speaker 1: these interviews I found from before he was released through
Speaker 1: the Independent, has a very choice quote from Mr Mann
Speaker 1: quote Hugo, tigers shoot, but you don't expect the tiger
Speaker 1: to win. Yeah. He was pardoned by President obiong And
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and in two thousand tend he gave
Speaker 1: an interview to the Guardian where he revealed the details
Speaker 1: of his torture and provided this quote. I didn't go
Speaker 1: there to make lots of money and sit on my
Speaker 1: own and say hey, I'm a rich man. I did
Speaker 1: it for my family, to improve their lives. I made
Speaker 1: the wrong choices. I am very sorry about that, for
Speaker 1: the pain and grief I brought my family, especially my
Speaker 1: daughter who was ten when I was incarcerated. Which is
Speaker 1: like Number one clearly doesn't give a shit about any
Speaker 1: of the like the soldiers that he put in danger
Speaker 1: through as a result of this. He doesn't even mention them.
Speaker 1: Doesn't even mention them. Um. And also like you were
Speaker 1: rich already, your family could have lived a comfortable life
Speaker 1: and you never needed to work again. You wanted them
Speaker 1: to be like own their own islands rich. That's why
Speaker 1: you did this. Oh my gosh, this could be a
Speaker 1: whole other behind the bastard's episode of like people who
Speaker 1: have tons of money who just get this obsession with
Speaker 1: the money. Where you could have done you could have whatever,
Speaker 1: like shitty, illegal, horrible thing you did. You could have
Speaker 1: not done that and lived a comfortable life, Like what
Speaker 1: is this obsession with Yeah, we have to be private
Speaker 1: island rich, and I don't. I don't even think it
Speaker 1: was really that. I honestly don't think I think the
Speaker 1: money was an incentive, but I think more than anything,
Speaker 1: man wanted the excitement and he wanted this to be
Speaker 1: able to brag about, like he wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to think this would be the feather in his cap
Speaker 1: as a mercenary. All these other mercenaries like Mike Cory
Speaker 1: and Bob Denard, they had led coups, like they had
Speaker 1: helped overthrow governments. He had never gotten to do that,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to. You know, it goes back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you had to say, how many people out there
Speaker 1: to doing horrible things? Do you think you're doing it
Speaker 1: for bragging rights? If you had to say one way
Speaker 1: or the other, that's a very high percentage. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't. You know, speaking of Tiger King, that that
Speaker 1: guy who was the inspiration for Scarface, that's clearly a
Speaker 1: guy who was just in it for the money. Because
Speaker 1: he he doesn't seem to have any desire to brag
Speaker 1: about it, like he just wanted to fucking He got rich,
Speaker 1: he did his time, he got out, and he bought
Speaker 1: a fucking farm in the middle of nowhere. I can
Speaker 1: respect that, even if you do awful things to get
Speaker 1: the money. But most of them want everyone to know
Speaker 1: how cool they are. So up. It's like worse to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I find it like yeah more yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like more like, um, I can't understand it. Yeah, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: souh more. Recently, um, in like a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: uh fucking uh. Simon Mann was interviewed by The Daily
Speaker 1: Mail about the coronavirus epidemic of all things, and the
Speaker 1: Daily Mail being a giant piece of ship. They were
Speaker 1: basically like, Hey, you spent a bunch of time in
Speaker 1: solitary confinement. What's your advice for people going through quarantine? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: the idea for a fucking article I can conceive of. Um.
Speaker 1: But Man's quote is really funny. Quote. You have to
Speaker 1: make your world the people in the place of your confinement,
Speaker 1: and stop constantly thinking at this time we should be
Speaker 1: doing this or that and the kids should be going
Speaker 1: back to school. Those thoughts are the ones that hurt you. Um,
Speaker 1: which I don't know, maybe is good advice. I kind
Speaker 1: of refused to acknowledge this guy is being capable of
Speaker 1: giving good advice, so fuck it. Yeah, fuck him. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear his advice. He honestly like, this
Speaker 1: is this is how I where I'm at. That same
Speaker 1: advice could be given by somebody else and I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: good advice, could advice? It's given by him, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: fucking I'm terrible advice. Yeah, fucking terrible advice. Well badka
Speaker 1: you want to know would be good advice? Right now? Uh?
Speaker 1: Robert advising people to go to go listen to Bridget's
Speaker 1: new podcast. Yes, I can tell you all about it.
Speaker 1: Oh please do um, thank you, Sophie. UM. My new
Speaker 1: podcast is called There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: It drops on I Heart Radio on July seven, and
Speaker 1: it's all about exploring the intersections of gender, technology and
Speaker 1: the Internet. You know. It's a culture show that really
Speaker 1: asked how have women and other marginalized voices shaped the
Speaker 1: experience of being online? And we really have shaped it.
Speaker 1: So please check it out. Question mark exclamation point. Do it.
Speaker 1: It's a requirement of joining our cult. Yep, yep. So
Speaker 1: that's the episode. Go, I don't know, overthrow a sovereign nation.
Speaker 1: Give it a shot. Just stay sober, stay sober. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna drink, do it after, don't do it during.
Speaker 1: And if you're gonna drink, like keep your mouth set,
Speaker 1: like don't get mouthie, don't drink and coup and don't
Speaker 1: text in coup. All of the rules for driving apply
Speaker 1: to coups. Yeah, that's the lesson all of them. That
Speaker 1: was good. I like Jesus Christ. These people are so dumb,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, cool, Well that's the s spode
Speaker 1: h