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Speaker 1: Well, Robert Evans Podcast, I don't have any time for

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Speaker 1: an introduction. I have had a thought, a critical thought

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Speaker 1: that I think must be analyzed before this episode, and

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Speaker 1: it relates to to Africa by Toto. Uh because in

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Speaker 1: the opening strains of the song, the singer notes that

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Speaker 1: it's going to take a lot to get whoever he's

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Speaker 1: singing the song about away from him, and that there's

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Speaker 1: nothing that a hundred men or more could do. But

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Speaker 1: with social isolation ng in place, I think we have

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Speaker 1: to assume that whoever is singing the song Africa by Toto,

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Speaker 1: like whatever character that is, is in fact isolated from

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Speaker 1: the person that they said they could never be separated from,

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Speaker 1: which leads the question how many men more than a

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Speaker 1: hundred is the COVID nineteen epidemic powerful? Then that that

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Speaker 1: this is this is critical to analyze. Nothing else matters.

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Speaker 1: We're canceling the rest of the episode until we figet

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Speaker 1: this out. Sophie, it's more than men. Yeah, yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: not canceling the episode. This is an episode with d J. Daniel.

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Speaker 1: I'm not canceling that, Joy, I'm gonna keep running the

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Speaker 1: numbers on this. But while I do that, Dan You're

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Speaker 1: a fan of a lot of things, right, You're You're

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Speaker 1: big into fandoms, all sorts of stuff that you're a

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Speaker 1: fan of. Are you? Are you a fan dan of

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Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan? Are you in Afghanistan? Get it?

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh my god, was so good. I'm

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Speaker 1: so proud. Okay, I take it. Um Okay, Well, I

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Speaker 1: mean I'm a fan of no wars, but um, you know,

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Speaker 1: I have a feeling by the end of this I

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Speaker 1: will be even less a fan of this one. Well,

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Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan is a real I think people,

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Speaker 1: It's been going on for so long that now we

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Speaker 1: all just think about it as this like endless, slightly

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Speaker 1: draining and expensive but mostly are gotten disaster that we

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Speaker 1: just can't seem to escape from. And I think we've

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Speaker 1: forgotten what a fucking crazy time the beginning of the

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Speaker 1: war in Afghanistan was, like it was. It was one

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Speaker 1: of the dumbest times and places that has ever collided together.

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Speaker 1: Um as a result of what I what I can

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Speaker 1: only call army grifters like this was a huge part

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Speaker 1: of the early warningt like it still is, but now

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Speaker 1: like the grifting is done by giant corporations. But in

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Speaker 1: the early days, when like U. S. Troops were first

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Speaker 1: into the country, there were a ton of just random

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Speaker 1: assholes who would roll into Afghanistan with whatever weapons they

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Speaker 1: could manage to smuggle across international borders and just try

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Speaker 1: to do some shit. Uh and it it we don't

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Speaker 1: we don't talk about them anymore, but it's one of

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Speaker 1: the funnest things that ever happened. And I I want

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Speaker 1: to tell you about a couple of these guys before

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Speaker 1: we get to the main subject of our episode. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the first one of these beautiful bastards I want to

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Speaker 1: talk about was Gary Brooks Faulkner. Now Brooks was a

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Speaker 1: Gary I should say, was a Greely, Colorado native who

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Speaker 1: traveled by boat in a series of overland routes to

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Speaker 1: try to make his way into Afghanistan and single handedly

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Speaker 1: capture Osama bin Laden. Now he had to travel on

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Speaker 1: a boat and via smuggling himself across borders because he

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Speaker 1: tried was trying to get into Afghanistan with a pistol,

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Speaker 1: a knife, night vision goggles, Christian evangelical literature, and a

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Speaker 1: Samurai sword that he all brought from what that that's

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Speaker 1: his his been laden kit was a pistol, a knife

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Speaker 1: night vision goggles like, okay, so pistol, Yeah, you're gonna

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Speaker 1: want you a gun, a some sword, right, A knife

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Speaker 1: practical you're in the mountains, You're always gonna want a knife,

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Speaker 1: night vision goggles, share Christian evangelical literature. Okay, I doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem practical, but go off. And then samurai sword, which

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Speaker 1: really I think keisy window what Gary imagined he'd be doing.

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Speaker 1: He just wanted that slung over his shoulders, striding across

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Speaker 1: the back so that when you know, the sun was

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Speaker 1: beating down on him and you just saw the silhouette

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Speaker 1: of a weird o costplayer coming into this town in Afghanistan,

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Speaker 1: he would be have that sword in the silhouette off

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Speaker 1: to the side. Yeah, you know, he imagined like getting

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Speaker 1: into a duel with a couple of Taliban guys, and yeah,

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Speaker 1: he had such dreams. Gary did um. But unfortunately Gary

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Speaker 1: never quite made it to Tora Bora to samurai fight

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Speaker 1: the Taliban. Instead, he was arrested almost immediately in Pakistan.

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Speaker 1: Because yeah, so the good news is that obviously, once

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Speaker 1: the media heard that some guy with a samurai sword

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Speaker 1: had been arrested in Afghanistan after leaving fucking Greeley, Colorado

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Speaker 1: to got kidnap the world's greatest terrorist. Uh it was.

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Speaker 1: It made the news. Uh So he was sent back

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Speaker 1: home by Pakistan, and he got kind of famous, and

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Speaker 1: he did appearances on the View and The Late Show

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Speaker 1: with David Letterman. Yeah, he was described as the Rocky

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Speaker 1: Mountain Rambo, even though he saw no action of any

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Speaker 1: kind and was in fact on dialysis the entire time.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, I feel comfortable saying if the police

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Speaker 1: in Pakistan hadn't arrested him, he would have almost certainly died,

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Speaker 1: even without the Taliban's help and with and with not

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Speaker 1: a word to the world about his presence or actions,

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Speaker 1: just disappearing off of this earth. Yeah, his kidneys would

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Speaker 1: have just given out as he was trying to hike

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Speaker 1: up the fucking Khyber Pass with a Samurai kana. Like, oh, man,

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Speaker 1: you'll you'll love to hear about it, but he obviously

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Speaker 1: like all that matters is that he got famous for

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Speaker 1: trying to take on Bin Laden with a Samurai sword

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Speaker 1: in a time when America was maybe the least rational

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Speaker 1: we've ever been. So everyone loved fucking Gary Faulkner, they

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Speaker 1: were fans, Okay, okay, yeah, at the time of will Ennium,

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Speaker 1: we were okay with a guy with a samre s

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Speaker 1: ord going into kick Bin. Lawton asked, yeah. Now. During

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Speaker 1: the media tour he did after his arrest, Faulkner revealed

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Speaker 1: that he was an ex con who had spent twelve

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Speaker 1: years in jail on a number of larceny and burglary charges,

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Speaker 1: and he kind of brilliantly pivoted off of this to

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Speaker 1: claim that as a skilled thief, he had precisely the

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Speaker 1: kind of talent necessary to track down a terrorist mastermind.

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Speaker 1: You know, that is the way you sell ship to Hollywood.

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Speaker 1: I mean most certainly, especially on all these interviews you're doing.

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Speaker 1: It's just like there I was. But oh my gosh,

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Speaker 1: the only thing that's missing is a wife who wouldn't

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Speaker 1: give him custody, like an ex wife who wouldn't like you.

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Speaker 1: Add that in and you've got fucking ninety minutes solid.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, fucking early two thousands. Nicolas Cage would

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Speaker 1: have been the right dude to play this character. Oh

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Speaker 1: my god. So to see a hand flick somewhere and

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Speaker 1: they're just like dismissing somebody just yeah, Faulkner is a

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Speaker 1: fun one. He even told so. During his interview with Letterman,

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Speaker 1: Gary Faulkner told that he didn't need to worry about

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Speaker 1: whatever bodyguards Osama bin Laden had because quote, I'm a thief, uh,

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Speaker 1: which is bullet Now. The unfortunate code of the story

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Speaker 1: of Gary Faulkner is that as a felon, he was

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Speaker 1: not able to legally possess a firearm, which became a

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Speaker 1: problem for him when he was arrested for shooting a

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Speaker 1: man in self defense back home in Colorado. So that

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Speaker 1: things didn't work out great in the for Gary Faulkner. Now.

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Speaker 1: Another beautiful Afghan war grifter was the Syrian born Matt Meeson,

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Speaker 1: a naturalized US citizen who also attempted to kill Osama

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Speaker 1: bin Laden in two thousand and five. He got on

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Speaker 1: a plane from Detroit to Syria. Apparently there just used

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Speaker 1: to be a direct like Detroit to Damaska's route the

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Speaker 1: two big d's uh, and he was stopped by authorities

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Speaker 1: when they realized he was traveling with thirteen thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: in cash, a Taser bullets, pepper spray body armor, and

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Speaker 1: three Geiger After three I love the bullets because he's like,

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Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna be able to find with all

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Speaker 1: this cash, I'll be able to buy a gun when

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Speaker 1: I hit Syria. But I better bring my own AMMO,

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Speaker 1: and I better bring three Geiger counters. Now he had

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Speaker 1: a reason for that, I mean, okayah my gosh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's he claimed that he was. His cover was that

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Speaker 1: he was a private investigator studying the illegal uranium trade

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Speaker 1: and he was going to use the Geiger counters to

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Speaker 1: help him lure in illegal uranium buyers or something like that.

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Speaker 1: It never really made much sense. This, this is, this

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Speaker 1: is truly this is I mean, you know, all these

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Speaker 1: guys are heroes. Speaking of heroes, former British Special Air

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Speaker 1: Service soldier Colin Barry was the smartest of all these grifters,

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Speaker 1: except for the guy we're about to talk about. He

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Speaker 1: traveled to Afghanistan under the cover of working on housing

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Speaker 1: projects for an engineering firm, and this seems to have

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Speaker 1: been as a way to hide his activities trying to

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Speaker 1: ride intel for m I six, who he claims approached

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Speaker 1: him for aid and may in fact have done so.

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Speaker 1: Uh In any case, various time as a secret agent

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Speaker 1: in Afghanistan came to an end when he shot to

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Speaker 1: random Afghan citizens to death in a hotel bar in Kabul.

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Speaker 1: He was jailed for murder. Now that little bit about

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Speaker 1: the story where it's like this guy with no evidence

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Speaker 1: claims he was working for m I six, and maybe

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Speaker 1: he was. All of these guys make claims to having

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Speaker 1: worked for like m I six, the CIA, the Defense

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Speaker 1: Department or something like that, and almost all of them

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Speaker 1: actually did to some extent um. Because here's here's the

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Speaker 1: thing about the start of the war in Afghanistan. So

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Speaker 1: number one, by the time like we invaded in Afghanistan,

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Speaker 1: the State Department had about three hundred and forty million

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Speaker 1: dollars and bounties out for the top thirty terrorism suspects worldwide.

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Speaker 1: So there were tens of millions of dollars out for

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Speaker 1: dudes who could capture Al Qaeda motherfuckers or Taliban motherfucker's right,

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Speaker 1: tens of millions of these bounties were paid off. So

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Speaker 1: there's that kind of money going out. But there was

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Speaker 1: also the militaries of mult couple nations were active in Afghanistan,

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Speaker 1: and none of them knew a goddamn thing about Afghanistan.

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Speaker 1: So anyone who could come in and make a good

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Speaker 1: pitch about how they could gather useful intel or do

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Speaker 1: something else that was necessary had a real good chance

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Speaker 1: of making tens of millions of dollars, because again, the

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Speaker 1: like the the coalition was just shifting cash into the

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Speaker 1: open mouths of anyone who could credibly claim to be

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Speaker 1: fighting terrorism, and no one knew anything like it was

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Speaker 1: even like it was a wild West at that point,

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Speaker 1: right in terms of the counter terrorism industry. So you

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Speaker 1: could just roll in the country and if you looked

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Speaker 1: right and talked right, you could suddenly have fucking CIA

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Speaker 1: dollars like flowing down your fucking mouth. Um, it was.

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Speaker 1: It was a fun time. Sounds like sounds like a

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Speaker 1: fun time. Yeah. So for for a few years, Afghanistan

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Speaker 1: was a grifter paradise and no one exploited it more

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Speaker 1: entertainingly than Jack Edema. Jonathan Keith Adema was born in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six and pau Keepsie, New York. His parents

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Speaker 1: were upper middle class and doting, and Jonathan was their

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Speaker 1: only son. His father was a former marine and a

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Speaker 1: veteran of the Second World War. Jonathan grew up beloved

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Speaker 1: and worshiped and surrounded by the sort of comfort and

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Speaker 1: care that few children are fortunate enough to enjoy. When

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Speaker 1: he was twelve years old, he watched the John Wayne

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Speaker 1: classic The Green Berets. Have you seen that movie? Danal,

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Speaker 1: I actually have not seen The Green Berets? Side note?

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Speaker 1: Side note? Can I put in a request to the

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Speaker 1: fans if anybody wants to remixed Gangster's Paradise by Coolio

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Speaker 1: and do Grifters Paradise please? There on Twitter? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: make it happen. Also shout at the city of Poughkeepsie.

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Speaker 1: I'm familiar. I've heard of pau keeps you, but keeps

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Speaker 1: I don't Daniel a little more familiar with Okay, Daniel,

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Speaker 1: you missed him yesterday called Beyonce. Beyonce Honestly, I'm always

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Speaker 1: a fan. When the fans came after you for a

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Speaker 1: gop a as well, that was really funny. I love that.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's just so great. I immediately text J. B.

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Speaker 1: Loftus and Little Recording and said, guess what fantastic And

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Speaker 1: we've been laughing about it for two days. It's wonderful.

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Speaker 1: I am so angry right now. Mostly mostly I am

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Speaker 1: angry at the way the State of New York names

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Speaker 1: towns that is complete. Yeah, I it's wrong, and I

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Speaker 1: don't think we should lean into that anymore. Agreed, You're

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Speaker 1: on You're on Blast New York more more main mainland name. So,

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Speaker 1: the movie The Green Berets was kind of the first

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Speaker 1: movie about special forces. Like now there's like a fucking

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Speaker 1: ton of those movies. It's like in every action movie

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Speaker 1: hero is gonna have some sort of Special Forces background,

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Speaker 1: but like this was the first time, like special forces

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Speaker 1: were kind of new in Vietnam, like the idea that

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Speaker 1: you would have these dudes, and The Green Berets was

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Speaker 1: a movie about them, and um, it was a very

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Speaker 1: a big hit. Uh, And it became John adena Adema's

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Speaker 1: very favorite movie as a little boy, and seeing this

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Speaker 1: film convinced him to give up his earlier dreams of

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Speaker 1: being a veterinarian and instead joined the military and become

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Speaker 1: a Green Beret himself. He enlisted as soon as he

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Speaker 1: was able to do so in nineteen seventy five, but

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Speaker 1: tragically he was too late to fight and maybe die

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Speaker 1: in Vietnam, but he did well enough on his entrance

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Speaker 1: tests that he qualified for the Special Forces. He was

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Speaker 1: helped in this by the fact that the post Vietnam

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Speaker 1: Special Forces had endured a serious manpower shortage since new

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Speaker 1: recruits had been scared off from joining for some inexplicable reason.

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Speaker 1: Jonathan was accepted even though he had bad eyesight. He

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Speaker 1: did a three year active duty term as a radio

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Speaker 1: operator and a weapon specialist, and then spent some time

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Speaker 1: in the reserves, reaching the rank of staff sergeant before

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Speaker 1: being discharged in nineteen eighty four. One of the difficulties

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Speaker 1: here is that even among credible sources, descriptions of Jack

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Speaker 1: Adema's time in the military very widely. This paragraph from

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Speaker 1: a Rolling Stone article on the man is probably as

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Speaker 1: close to accurate as you're going to get in a

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Speaker 1: story about this con man's military career. Though a demas

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Speaker 1: military record reflects qualification as a pistol expert and badges

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Speaker 1: awarded for scuba and parachute training, there are no indications

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Speaker 1: that he ever heard a shot fired in anger while

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Speaker 1: he was in the military. Moreover, a nineteen North Carolina

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Speaker 1: probation report quotes a military evaluator describing Adema as the

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Speaker 1: most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man I have ever known,

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Speaker 1: and a letter of reprimands cited Adema's gross immaturity, characterized

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Speaker 1: by irrationality and a tendency towards violence. The reprimand came

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Speaker 1: after Adema attempted to attack a senior commanding officer. So

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Speaker 1: Jack Adema is in the Special Forces, but you would

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Speaker 1: not call him like he's not he's not good at it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if he's attacking his officer, you can't come on, man.

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Speaker 1: There were very few rules right after Vietnam. There were

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Speaker 1: like nobody wanted to be in the military. It was

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Speaker 1: a real ship show. Well there you go. Now. While

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Speaker 1: he was still in the reserves, Jonathan, which is the

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Speaker 1: name he still went by at the time, spent several

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Speaker 1: amous year, aimless years wandering around the small town in

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Speaker 1: New York he lived in. Who pronounces the name of

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Speaker 1: their town wrong because there jerks um, you know, just

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Speaker 1: kind of trying to figure out what to do with

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Speaker 1: his life. See, all john had ever wanted to do

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Speaker 1: was fight in a foreign war, but the accursed years

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Speaker 1: of relative peace after Vietnam made that almost an impossible impossibility. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan settled on a way to still do cool looking

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Speaker 1: army type stuff without actually serving in the military, he

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Speaker 1: founded a counter terrorism training school in the town of

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Speaker 1: Red Hook. Now John had no real qualifications to do this,

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Speaker 1: other than the fact that he had been very bad

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Speaker 1: at being in the Special Forces UM. The exact extent

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Speaker 1: of his work is unclear, but journalists eventually confirmed that

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Speaker 1: he trained guards to protect the US government facilities in

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Speaker 1: Haiti and did some amount of like eaguely described work

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Speaker 1: for the Thai military. The president's son, Ron Reagan Jr.

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Speaker 1: Used his facilities at some point, and I we don't

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Speaker 1: really have a clear idea as to why UM and

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Speaker 1: training people in vague counter terrorism techniques was not John's

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Speaker 1: ownly activity. During this period, he was also breaking the

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Speaker 1: law constantly. In nineteen eighty two, he was arrested for

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Speaker 1: possession stolen property. In nineteen eight six, he was charged

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Speaker 1: with resisting arrest and assault with attempt to physically harm.

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Speaker 1: He received a nineteen eighty eight arrest for disorderly conduct

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Speaker 1: in a nineteen ninety arrest for assault involving discharging a firearm.

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Speaker 1: He was never convicted for any of these crimes, and

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Speaker 1: we don't really know what happened. But you couldn't stop

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Speaker 1: this dude from getting arrested. Um, so kind of go off,

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Speaker 1: go off, just you know, live your truth, get arrested.

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Speaker 1: This is clearly going to end in some fantastical manner.

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Speaker 1: So every move is just like I'm supporting it all

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Speaker 1: the way up and I mean it ends in Mexico,

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Speaker 1: which I think we all know in our hearts. But great.

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Speaker 1: I can't say if if Jonathan was good or not

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Speaker 1: at actually training people in counter terrorism, but he was

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Speaker 1: terrible at running such a business legally. His camp generated

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Speaker 1: numerous noise complaints and was eventually shut down over a

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Speaker 1: zoning violation. A DIMA moved next to Fayetteville, North Carolina,

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Speaker 1: a location he picked for its proximity to Special Forces

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Speaker 1: headquarters near Fort Bragg. Now, rather than selling terrorism training

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Speaker 1: this time, he instead set up a store dedicated to

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Speaker 1: selling non lethal military equipment and a side business running

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Speaker 1: a series of Special Operations trade shows. It proved good

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Speaker 1: at getting different manufacturers on board and filling big rooms

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Speaker 1: with fancy military equipment and people who wanted to look

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Speaker 1: at it. Now, some of these people were actually Special

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Speaker 1: Forces veterans or members of the Defense Department, but most

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Speaker 1: of the people who showed for these trade shows were

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Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune readers their guys who just wanted to

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Speaker 1: look at guns and stuff. Yeah, thank you, thank you,

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Speaker 1: and great magazine, un fully unproblematic magazine. Yeah. So, well

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Speaker 1: tell you something. When I had to battle that seal underwater,

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Speaker 1: I used my knife fighting techniques that I learned in

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Speaker 1: the Underwater knife Fighting Technique section of Soldier of Fortune.

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Speaker 1: That seal came after me and I needed to defend myself.

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Speaker 1: For the listeners, I'm absolutely kidding. I have never hermed

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Speaker 1: in my life, Daniel. You we don't need to lie.

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Speaker 1: Seals are a threat and the only way to deal

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Speaker 1: with them is underwater knife fighting. I am. I focus

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Speaker 1: always on practical prepping and so like you want to

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Speaker 1: have some extra food, you want to know how to

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Speaker 1: deal with like a bleeding wound, how to like staunch

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Speaker 1: blood flow, and you need to know how to beat

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Speaker 1: a seal in a knife fight. Those are those are

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Speaker 1: basic practical steps we can all take. Love it. So

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Speaker 1: speaking of practical steps, so the reality of the situation

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Speaker 1: is that John Adma used his connections that he built

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Speaker 1: in his counter terrorism training school to like fill up

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Speaker 1: convention rooms cool military gear and people would pay to

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Speaker 1: go gawk at it, and you know it was. It

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Speaker 1: was a decent business. Um. That's the reality of what happened. Now.

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Speaker 1: John Adema would go on, however, to speak about this

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Speaker 1: UH somewhat differently. UM. He would claim in the future

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Speaker 1: that after leaving the army, he worked as a US

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Speaker 1: military advisor in El Salvador and Honduras. There's no evidence

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Speaker 1: for this. He claimed he worked as part of a

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Speaker 1: special mission mission unit and refused to ever elaborate as

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Speaker 1: to what that job entailed. No records support any of this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: No records support that he did anything but failed to

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Speaker 1: run a training center and then lead a bunch of

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Speaker 1: nerds through a fucking convention center. And when confronted with

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Speaker 1: the fact that there was no evidence of him doing

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Speaker 1: all this badass special ops stuff, he would tell journalists

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Speaker 1: that the records of his actual military service were secret records,

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Speaker 1: which he described as the ones that they don't want

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Speaker 1: to give anyone, which is really, really handy. So the

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Speaker 1: Trey shows that John ran generated enough interest from legitimate

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Speaker 1: experts that Adema eventually met up with a subcontractor who

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Speaker 1: was able to get him a real job training real

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Speaker 1: cops in the former Soviet Republic of Lithuania, who we

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Speaker 1: all knew. No is like the king of doing a

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Speaker 1: good background check on a guy. That's what Lithuania. Yeah, what,

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Speaker 1: the trade shows are great places to get products. I

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Speaker 1: can't I can't tell what you're possibly trying to lead

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Speaker 1: me into here, Daniel. Services if one of those services

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Speaker 1: is enlisting in weird you know, armies and potential terrorist organization,

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Speaker 1: I I don't know what either of you were trying

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Speaker 1: to do. But on an unrelated note, it is time

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Speaker 1: for an ad plug. We're back and we're on the internet,

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Speaker 1: and now we're going to talk about motherfucking Jack Adema

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Speaker 1: some more. So, he manages to like kind of leverage

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Speaker 1: his his his various experiences into a job training cops

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Speaker 1: in the former Soviet Republic of Lithuania. So he rolls

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Speaker 1: there in nine right after the U s. S r

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Speaker 1: ns UM, and the reality seems to be that he

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Speaker 1: spent a brief period of time teaching cops in a

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Speaker 1: very uh poor nation dealing with the collapse of its

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Speaker 1: previous government. The reality for John Adema, though, is that

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Speaker 1: he stumbled immediately upon a multimillion dollar black market and

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Speaker 1: backpack nuclear weapons. Um. These devices known as special atomic

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Speaker 1: Demolitians munitions did exist in government stockpiles, and there were

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Speaker 1: constant rumors after the end of the Cold War that

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Speaker 1: a number of them had escaped the fall of the U. S.

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Speaker 1: S R. But there's no evidence anywhere that such a

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Speaker 1: device wound up on any nations black market. The general

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Speaker 1: incompetence of authorities worldwide, and the fact that no one ever,

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Speaker 1: no terrorist group ever got such a weapon as is

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Speaker 1: evidence that these were nothing more than rumors. But John

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Speaker 1: ademon knew that the story of Russian suitcase nukes was

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Speaker 1: a good one, so he started reaching out to senior

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Speaker 1: Pentagon officials while he was still in Lithuania and telling

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Speaker 1: them that he'd stumbled upon the secret nuke market. Now

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Speaker 1: the secret nuke market. Yeah, and I don't know if

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Speaker 1: you know this, Daniel, but if you start talking to

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Speaker 1: Defense Department officials about the fact that you know where

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Speaker 1: a bunch of nuclear weapons are being sold for cash,

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Speaker 1: you will probably wind up having conversations with the FBI.

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Speaker 1: That's just shocker. Yeah, that's just how that's gonna go.

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Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, I feel like the easiest way

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Speaker 1: to get a conversation with the FBI is to like

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Speaker 1: make them believe you might know about stolen nuclear warheads.

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Speaker 1: That's a they're going to be interested in that one.

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Speaker 1: So the Bureau demanded to sit down with Jack Adema

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Speaker 1: and then demanded that he tell them who his sources were,

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Speaker 1: which is a pretty reasonable demand given the fact that

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Speaker 1: he's talking about backpack nukes. But a Deema refused to

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Speaker 1: give them any concrete information because, in his words, he

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Speaker 1: believed the FBI had been penetrated by Russian agents. Now

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Speaker 1: here's how Rolling Stone describes would happen next. By Adema's account,

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Speaker 1: the FBI then set out to destroy him, tiring him

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Speaker 1: with more than fifty counts of wire fraud that put

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Speaker 1: him in federal prison for four years during the mid nineties. However,

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Speaker 1: U S law enforcement officials actually began investigating a Deema

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Speaker 1: in May nine, more than a year before he supposedly

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Speaker 1: refused to hand over his Lithuanian sources to the FBI.

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Speaker 1: The A t F noted in a report filed during

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Speaker 1: the course of the investigation that Adema was known to

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Speaker 1: have a fictitious major's i d from the from the

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Speaker 1: army and was desparred from army contracts in June eighteenth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety after he misrepresented his business as being owned

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Speaker 1: by a minority. So this is all very winding because

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Speaker 1: Jack lies about everything, and a lot of this is

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Speaker 1: pre the Internet really coming around. But what happened is

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Speaker 1: Jack committed mass wire fraud UM in a number of

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Speaker 1: different ways, both from like stealing hundreds of thousands of

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Speaker 1: dollars from print companies and like investments, and also running

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Speaker 1: fake businesses that he just used to funnel money and

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Speaker 1: loans through, and doing stuff like lying to the government

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Speaker 1: to get army contracts to provide them with equipment by

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Speaker 1: pretending his businesses owned by a minority UM. So he

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Speaker 1: wound up getting in a lot of trouble, investigated by

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Speaker 1: multiple federal agencies and convicted with fifty counts of wire

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Speaker 1: fraud and going to prison for four years. And he

429
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 1: later claimed that this is because he'd stumbled upon a

430
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:32,959
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon market in Lithuania that the FBI had uh

431
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: not wanted him to shut down for some reason. Anyway,

432
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: it's a dumb story, but that's what happens. Yeah, that's

433
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:43,919
Speaker 1: where I found him. But they were like no, no no, no,

434
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 1: it's not important. We swear a deema this guy's story.

435
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:48,919
Speaker 1: There's so much that's hard to understand about, like what

436
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:52,440
Speaker 1: happened here, because he's he's again, he's just lying constantly.

437
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:54,639
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I was gonna say, it just sounds

438
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: like everybody, everybody's hearing the lies and saying like okay,

439
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 1: and then not doing anything about it. And he just

440
00:25:00,600 --> 00:25:04,680
Speaker 1: keeps spinning more and more webs, a lot of spider webs. Yeah. Yeah.

441
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:07,480
Speaker 1: He goes to jail, and in his words, it's because

442
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:10,480
Speaker 1: the FBI wanted to destroy him, And in the FBI's words,

443
00:25:10,480 --> 00:25:13,919
Speaker 1: it's because he just couldn't stop committing wire fraud. Um

444
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 1: so Adema spent yeah, in nineteen and ninety seven in

445
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: a series of federal prisons. He kept up his correspondence

446
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 1: with the outside world, though, and managed to get in

447
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:24,400
Speaker 1: contact with Jim Morris, a writer for Soldier of Fortune

448
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 1: magazine and a former Special Forces major. Morris believed a

449
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: demon stories of being hunted by the FBI and took

450
00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 1: up the cause of defending him in a series of editorials.

451
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 1: These actually convinced some mainstream reporters to look into the story,

452
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:39,919
Speaker 1: and one of these reporters was Ted Kavanaugh, a former

453
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 1: founding partner of CNN. He brought the story to the

454
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: executive producer of Ida Eye with Connie Chung on CBS,

455
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,840
Speaker 1: and they sent a real journalist, Gary Skirka, to interview

456
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:53,399
Speaker 1: Adema from prison. The resulting documentary wound up focusing on

457
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: arms dealing in Lithuania and had actually like almost nothing

458
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:59,399
Speaker 1: to do with John Adema, but it won Skirka and

459
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 1: Award for Investigative Reporters in nineteen. So Skirka felt bad because,

460
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:08,439
Speaker 1: like Edema, he felt that a demon had helped him

461
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 1: get on the trail of a real story because obviously

462
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: there was a lot of fucking illegal weapons training going

463
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 1: on in former Soviet block nations, but he had like

464
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 1: he got cut from the documentary because there were no

465
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 1: fucking suitcase nukes being sold. But Skirka, you know, like, yeah,

466
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: he had lied about that. But Skirka likes this guy,

467
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:30,680
Speaker 1: and he feels bad that he got cut from the documentary. Um,

468
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 1: and he feels kind of angry that CBS executives ordered

469
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 1: all footage of Adena cut a dima cut from the

470
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,439
Speaker 1: final product because they realized he was a grifter. But

471
00:26:38,520 --> 00:26:41,199
Speaker 1: Skirka kind of falls under this guy's spell and he

472
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:43,920
Speaker 1: stays in touch with his jailhouse source throughout a demon

473
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:47,160
Speaker 1: sentence um and promises to help him out when Jonathan

474
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:51,119
Speaker 1: gets freed. Now, Adema had other non journalist pin pals

475
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 1: during this time. He started exchanging letters with a woman

476
00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: named Victoria running Wolf, who was a forty ish blonde

477
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 1: woman from Fayetteville, and the two had first met a

478
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: few months after Dema got out of prison. Um, but

479
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: they'd like been exchanging letters and she fell in love

480
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:07,480
Speaker 1: with him while he was jailed. So we know immediately

481
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: that this is going to go well. You've got a

482
00:27:09,480 --> 00:27:11,719
Speaker 1: grifter who falls in love with a woman in prison.

483
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:15,199
Speaker 1: Victoria later recalled quote, I knew right then I was

484
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: going to have my hands full. I knew it from

485
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:21,120
Speaker 1: the time he said hello. Yeah. So, being the sort

486
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:24,880
Speaker 1: of fellow who's constitutionally incapable of not scheming, Adema convinced

487
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 1: Victoria running Wolf to invest with him in the Ultimate

488
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: Pet Resort, a hotel for pets. And as far as

489
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 1: I can tell, this might have actually been a legitimate business.

490
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:35,600
Speaker 1: And I have to emphasize the as far as I

491
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: can tell apart because the only only one of the

492
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 1: sources I found talks about this in any kind of depth.

493
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: And I personally suspect that this must have been some

494
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: kind of a con too, but it just hasn't been unraveled.

495
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: But maybe, yeah, this is a con city up in here.

496
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: Maybe he had a pet resort. It's impossible to say.

497
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: Speaking of schemes, Jonathan Adema and his journalist Pal Scarca

498
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,120
Speaker 1: got together once he was out of prison, and using

499
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: Skirrka's credibility as an award winning journalist, they succeeded in

500
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: getting an assignment with forty eight hours on CBS reporting

501
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:12,200
Speaker 1: on the story of retired Green Beret Colonel George Merrichik

502
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: now Colonel Marrichick was and still is one of the

503
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 1: most highly decorated Special Forces soldiers in history. And he

504
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:23,240
Speaker 1: also murdered the ship out of his wife in n Um.

505
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 1: He was convicted. Yeah, he was convicted of this murder

506
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 1: so many times. This guy, fucking Marricheck gets convicted of

507
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: murder the way most people like going for fucking colorectal

508
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: cancer screenings like it's it's yeah, So he's murdering multiple

509
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 1: people in getting out of the same No, he just

510
00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 1: kills so he kills the ship out of his wife,

511
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 1: and he gets tried for it, but he succeeds in

512
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: because he's this decorated soldier building up particularly him, like

513
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: the right wing media ecosystem like Soldier of Fortune is

514
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: big on this. He gets a bunch of people to

515
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 1: be like, no, he's innocent, he was framed, you know,

516
00:28:57,440 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 1: he didn't do it, Like this is just like a

517
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:02,719
Speaker 1: scheme against the American hero. So he keeps getting retried,

518
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:07,280
Speaker 1: of course, and he keeps getting reconvicted too, because he

519
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 1: obviously did it. Um it's yeah, it's so he's out

520
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: of prison now and alive, but he was convicted of

521
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: murder multiple times, but a lot of people think he's innocent.

522
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: It's a very strange story. Maybe we'll cover it the

523
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 1: day alive. Yeah, he's currently out of prison, although again

524
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: was convicted. I know somewhere in the US if you

525
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: look up fucking George Merrichick, you'll figure it out. I'm

526
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:34,840
Speaker 1: just gonna leave it alone. Yeah, don't marry him, I

527
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: can tell you that much. I don't think I don't

528
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 1: think that's gonna Yeah. So John Admas sees that this

529
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:44,360
Speaker 1: Special Forces colonel has become like the center of this

530
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:47,480
Speaker 1: this like media blitz uh, and sees that there's fucking

531
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: money in it, and he shoves his journalist pals Krka,

532
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: onto the story and the two get to work investigating

533
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 1: the murder. But as soon as CBS sees what they're

534
00:29:55,360 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: working on, it like drops them immediately because they realized

535
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: that neither of these guys have any sense of objectivity

536
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,240
Speaker 1: about the case, and we're not in any way going

537
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 1: to report critically on what had happened. Uh And I'm

538
00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 1: gonna quote now from the Columbia Journalism Review. Adema and

539
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 1: Skirka had opened a free Merritchek office in Wilmington, North Carolina,

540
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: where the trial was taking place, and one witnessed alleged

541
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: that Adema and another man came to his house to

542
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 1: harass him the night before he was slated to testify.

543
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 1: A Dima also told several associates he was detained for

544
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: impersonating a police officer in an effort to get into

545
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: a Detroit prison and convince a convicted serial killer to

546
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 1: confess to the murder. So there's I want to talk

547
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: as a journalist here. So many as a journalist, obviously,

548
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:41,479
Speaker 1: objectivity gets gets compromised all the time. There's really no

549
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 1: way in being perfectly objective, especially, you wind up sympathizing

550
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: with people all the time that you report on. However,

551
00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:53,719
Speaker 1: if you are impersonating prison and breaking into a jail

552
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: to trick a convicted serial killer into con confessing to

553
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: a murder, your journalistic objectivity has been I would say,

554
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 1: compromised beyond the point of acceptability. Amen to that. We

555
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: all have a different line as reporters, but I think

556
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:18,320
Speaker 1: that crosses everyone's lot. I am. I'm not a reporter myself,

557
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: but yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, So Skurca and Adema.

558
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: Now that CBS has been like, no, we don't want

559
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 1: any of this former news website of their own point

560
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 1: blank news, and start publishing an investigation there, and it

561
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 1: might have been good work. They want a National Press

562
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: Club Award for their coverage, and I have no idea

563
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 1: what they actually wrote about. It's impossible for me to

564
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 1: actually analyze this coverage, but they want to fucking award

565
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 1: for it, So maybe maybe what they did was good.

566
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 1: I don't know. My gut is saying that Scarca was

567
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 1: a good reporter who just got conned by this guy,

568
00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: and he might have actually put up some good work

569
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: about the case. Um, but it's it's really fucking hard

570
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: to say. Uh. And it's made harder to say because

571
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 1: right when Skirca and Adema were working at this, Jonathan

572
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 1: Skirka had another side hustle, which was filing hundreds of

573
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:15,959
Speaker 1: frivolous lawsuits against sixty minutes, US News and World Report

574
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: and every other journalist who wrote articles about the fact

575
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: that he'd like tried to con the FBI into thinking

576
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: he had suitcase nukes in Lithuania. Um so he just

577
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 1: starts suing people left and right for reporting on the

578
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,560
Speaker 1: fact that he had been jailed for while wire fraud

579
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: and was lying that it's very, very like any of

580
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 1: these guys. He filed so many lawsuits that trying to

581
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 1: like track down what they were all about and what

582
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,719
Speaker 1: they were claiming was impossible. He also filed a plagiarism

583
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 1: suit against dream Works, claiming that the George Clooney Nicole

584
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 1: Kidman movie The Peacemaker had in fact been based on

585
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: material they stole from a movie treatment that he had

586
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: started to write but not written. Okay, yeah, I just

587
00:32:55,920 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: want the behind Bassard's hands to know that there's been

588
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: like a solid like thirty seconds just me shaking my

589
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: head at these foolish, frivolous actions and lawsuits because this

590
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: is yeah, and he's he's right now like kind of

591
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: we would never have written a story about this guy

592
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: if if this was all he did, because right now

593
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: it's just mostly tricking this one journalist into thinking he

594
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: had something to say and filing a bunch of bullshit

595
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:23,480
Speaker 1: lawsuits and go to jail for wire fraud. And this

596
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 1: is kind of the state of affairs with Jonathan Edema

597
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 1: as it existed on September eleventh, two thousand one. Are

598
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: you aware of that date, Daniel, Yes, I am Robert,

599
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: you're aware of that date. Yeah, it was. It was,

600
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: you know, several days before the release of Big Trouble, um,

601
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: the Tim Allen film that changed America. I think we

602
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 1: can all say that after Big Trouble came out, nothing

603
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: was ever the same. Yeah. Now there. You may not

604
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 1: be aware of this, but there was also a terrorist

605
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: attack on New York that same day, uh, and it

606
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: was pretty significant to Yeah. Yeah, and John Adima was

607
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: he really he really was hit hard by the towers

608
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 1: falling and by all those planes being Yeah, as he

609
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: would later say, they blew up the fucking World Trade Center,

610
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,360
Speaker 1: and my whole life changed. I'm a fucking New Yorker.

611
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:16,760
Speaker 1: I'm going to kill every goddamn one of them until

612
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 1: I dropped dead. Now, them that he was talking about

613
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:23,839
Speaker 1: in that interview was al Qaeda, but also less specifically

614
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 1: in the Afghan people he could possibly get his hands on,

615
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: and his wife, Victoria Running Wolf, was totally supportive of this,

616
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:31,919
Speaker 1: later telling a journalist a lot of us put yellow

617
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 1: ribbons on our cars or flags on our houses. My

618
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: husband decided to go over to Afghanistan and hunt the

619
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:41,360
Speaker 1: bad guys, which is one way to describe what d

620
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 1: Bless her heart. It's weird the only things you find

621
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: about her or her being utterly supportive of him, and

622
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:54,200
Speaker 1: then her disappearing completely from his life. Um, and there's

623
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: a story there that's not great. Yeah, isn't that. Isn't

624
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: that the isn't that the dentist system? Just yeah, it's

625
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:03,000
Speaker 1: just you get really close, you connect, and you just

626
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: disappear entirely. That's that's the that's the right. He disappeared

627
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:13,439
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan repeatedly. Ye so before he went to Afghanistan, though,

628
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: Jonathan Adema decided to get on TV and start establishing

629
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: his bonafides as a terrorism expert. Now nowadays, every fucking

630
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: TV channel has countless terrorism experts. There's more terrorism experts

631
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 1: in the world than there are fucking terrorists right now. Um.

632
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:32,520
Speaker 1: But in the immediate wake at nine eleven, which was

633
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:35,439
Speaker 1: again the release of Big Trouble, the Tim Allen movie,

634
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,439
Speaker 1: terrorism was something that Americans suddenly cared an awful lot about,

635
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,840
Speaker 1: possibly because the movie Big Trouble focused on a Russian

636
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: suitcase snooke getting out into the hands of some terrorists

637
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: who get it on a hijacked plane. There's there's a

638
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:52,280
Speaker 1: c I a plot in the movie Big Trouble based

639
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:54,799
Speaker 1: on the Dave Barry book Big Trouble, and people need

640
00:35:54,840 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: to know about it. Daniel Robert, the threat is so long,

641
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: it is, and that's how you know it's truely, So

642
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:13,319
Speaker 1: just John Adema, nine eleven happens, and Adema is like,

643
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: all right, I gotta get on TV. Terrorism is going

644
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 1: to be like the big thing for the next forever,

645
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:20,439
Speaker 1: and I've got to establish myself early as a TV

646
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: expert because there's gonna be some fucking money in that.

647
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:25,720
Speaker 1: And he is not wrong on this. And on September twelve,

648
00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:28,040
Speaker 1: two thou one Adema showed up as a guest on

649
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: a local Los Angeles Fox News affiliate, written as a

650
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 1: described as a counter terrorism advisor. He told audiences that

651
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 1: he'd come across evidence. Yeah, he told evidence audiences that

652
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: he'd come across evidence that three Canadian airliners had also

653
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: been hijacked by al Qaida, along with a total of

654
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: four American planes. Now this was bullshit, but nobody was

655
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 1: really fact checking at all on nine twelve, So it

656
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 1: played well in the immediate wake of fear and terror

657
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 1: after the attacks and the release of Big Trouble. Now,

658
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,480
Speaker 1: while he was doing media, ran says John Adima also

659
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: reached out to his all his old friends Skirka. He

660
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:07,239
Speaker 1: informed him that he was headed over to Afghanistan straightaway,

661
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 1: not to kill a bunch of people, but to perform

662
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:13,640
Speaker 1: vaguely defined humanitarian aid work. He told Skirka that he

663
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: had set up a deal with an NGO called Knightsbridge International,

664
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 1: which was run by a veteran named ed Artist and

665
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,320
Speaker 1: focused on like delivering aid to the most dangerous places

666
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 1: on Earth. So this was like on its surface, a

667
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 1: good story is like this former Green Beret wants to

668
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 1: have his journalist friend come with him to Afghanistan to

669
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: help this NGO made up of veterans deliver aid to Afghanistan. Like,

670
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: as a fucking journalist, that's a great tale. So Skirka

671
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:42,720
Speaker 1: pitches this, Yeah good story. Yeah yeah. So Skirka pitches

672
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 1: this to National Geographics TV division UM and he claims.

673
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: Skurka claims that he told them that Edema was a

674
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:52,279
Speaker 1: convicted felon uh and that the two were friends, and

675
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,800
Speaker 1: nat GEO decided that the story was still worth doing now,

676
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: so they approved this and he gets funding to do it.

677
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:02,360
Speaker 1: So they're they're going to fucking Afghanistan. Yeah it Now,

678
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:04,919
Speaker 1: it was not easy to get into Afghanistan in late

679
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: two thousand one. SKRCA and Adema had to charter a

680
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,080
Speaker 1: plane with a group of other aid workers and reporters

681
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: from Tajikistan to Kabul in late two thousand one. And

682
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: I found a really fun article on Time by Kirk Spitzer,

683
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 1: who's a veteran war correspondent and was on that flight.

684
00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 1: And here's what he has to say about John Adema's

685
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 1: behavior during the trip over to Afghanistan. Let's get it.

686
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,440
Speaker 1: The plane blew attire on takeoff from the deshamb Airport

687
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 1: and was not replaced until late in the day. It

688
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: was agreed that rather than risk flying over the twenty

689
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:37,440
Speaker 1: thousand foot Hindu kush at night in midwinter with a

690
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:40,320
Speaker 1: dodgy pilot and a plane with no instruments, we should

691
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:43,200
Speaker 1: wait until the next day. But among the passengers was

692
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:45,839
Speaker 1: a group of displaced Afghans frantic to get home, who

693
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 1: angrily demanded that we take off right away. A Dima,

694
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:50,640
Speaker 1: who was also a passenger and was dressed in his

695
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 1: customary paramilitary gear in dark sunglasses, poured fuel on the

696
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: fire by shouting that he knew the codes at the

697
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 1: Bagram air field. He said that once we were over

698
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 1: the runway, he could video down to the control tower

699
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: to get American troops to turn on the lights. This

700
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: was pure fantasy, of course, there were no codes. There

701
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:10,640
Speaker 1: was no way to communicate with American troops from a

702
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:15,280
Speaker 1: broken down Russian built cargo plane, and American ground controllers

703
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 1: certainly would not turn on the lights for an unidentified

704
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 1: plane that happened to show up in the middle of

705
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: a war zone. If that plane took off that afternoon,

706
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:26,440
Speaker 1: everybody on board was going to die, including a Dima.

707
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:29,200
Speaker 1: It wasn't until several of us dragged a Dima aside

708
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 1: and impressed on him the seriousness of the situation that

709
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 1: he finally conceded that maybe he didn't really know any

710
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:38,800
Speaker 1: codes or radio frequencies. After all, we called the flight

711
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:41,360
Speaker 1: off and everyone lived for another day, as did a

712
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 1: demon's flights a fantasy. So every now and then you

713
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: get like stories about this guy from people who weren't liars, uh,

714
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,879
Speaker 1: and they're always like that, that's that's the best. I

715
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 1: love that there is truly like it wouldn't happen at

716
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 1: this point anymore because you know, everybody, everybody's too real

717
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: and takes it too seriously. And I mean, or rather,

718
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: when we rephrase that everybody's too real and takes too seriously,

719
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: I would hope they do. But it's like you can't

720
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 1: have any bullshit anymore in these serious situations. But I

721
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 1: love the genre of real bad guy that was like

722
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:20,719
Speaker 1: actual nineties villains that people were just like looking at them, like,

723
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:23,760
Speaker 1: are you are you serious? Right now? Is this person?

724
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: How did this person even get here? They were able

725
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:27,720
Speaker 1: to get past the one to two layers of security

726
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 1: to get to level three when people were like, wait,

727
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:34,040
Speaker 1: a minute. What Yeah, I mean I think the actually

728
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:37,719
Speaker 1: bad guy they actually existed. Yeah. The explanation of how

729
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 1: he gets into a place like this is the thing

730
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people don't really get

731
00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 1: about war reporting. Like I get a lot of questions

732
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: about like, how did you go to Iraq? How do

733
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: you get to Ukraine Syria? You you buy a plane

734
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 1: ticket and you walk. Uh. There's often remarkably little in

735
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 1: the way of people stopping you from doing anything in

736
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:58,879
Speaker 1: places like that. And yeah, that's kind of what John

737
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,320
Speaker 1: Adema takes advantage. If he just gets on this plane

738
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: almost gets everyone killed by being like, no, I know

739
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:06,880
Speaker 1: the codes to the airfield, and he's just lying the

740
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 1: whole time. But now he's in Afghanistan with a National

741
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:16,720
Speaker 1: Geographic uh documentary production team. Um yeah, and he manages

742
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 1: to link up with ed Artist and the other AID

743
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:22,239
Speaker 1: workers at nights Bridge in November of two thousand and one.

744
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: And once they're all together, it immediately becomes obvious to

745
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:28,400
Speaker 1: the folks from National Geographic that Ed Artists was not

746
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: as on board with this documentary as a Deema had

747
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,240
Speaker 1: led them to believe, and that John A. Dima himself

748
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: had no actual desire to report on humanitarian aid work. Instead,

749
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,399
Speaker 1: he wanted to get into a gunfight as quickly as

750
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:46,399
Speaker 1: fucking possible. All right, here's these aid guys. I'm gonna

751
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: go fucking find some shooting. Yeah. So one of the

752
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: members of the team of the documentary team, a Special

753
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 1: Forces vet named Greg Long, recalled later that a dima's

754
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:57,239
Speaker 1: attitude changed a hundred and eighty degrees as soon as

755
00:41:57,239 --> 00:41:59,840
Speaker 1: they got into the country. So, while ed Artist and

756
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 1: his men's tried to deliver life saving aid uh in,

757
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,839
Speaker 1: the documentary team tried to film that, John Adema got

758
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:08,239
Speaker 1: to work attempting to hook up with the Northern Alliance,

759
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:11,839
Speaker 1: an insurgent group battling the Taliban. Adema ignored the work

760
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,400
Speaker 1: he'd come to Afghanistan to do and started tracking the

761
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:17,240
Speaker 1: movements of Northern Alliance troops and attempting to make contact

762
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:19,440
Speaker 1: with them and hopes that he could sell them weapons.

763
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 1: It's just now, that's that's that's the that's that's our

764
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: man right there. That that's our man right there. He

765
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:31,200
Speaker 1: stopped participating. What were they selling? But what were they selling? Oh,

766
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 1: he didn't have anything to sell. Let's let's go to ads.

767
00:42:39,560 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 1: We're back from ADS, and in the break, Daniel had

768
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: to take an important phone call, and I found that

769
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: the iron bars I ordered had finally arrived. Everyone's everyone's

770
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: having a good day, Anderson's happy. I'm gonna put bars

771
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 1: on my windows like a crazy person and just go

772
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 1: increasingly unhinged. It's gonna be nice. I think you're probably

773
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: doing the right thing, to be honest with you, I

774
00:43:06,239 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: am now eating a banana on video chat. We're recording. Okay, alright, alright.

775
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:19,279
Speaker 1: First of all, bana speaking of bananas. God damnit, Dan

776
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:30,720
Speaker 1: speaking of bananas. Let's talk about John Adma. So yeah, yeah,

777
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,560
Speaker 1: while ed artists, who was again that veteran running nights

778
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:37,879
Speaker 1: Bridge the AID organization and his men delivered uh yeah,

779
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 1: life saving aid, Adma attempted to sell weapons to a

780
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 1: militant group in Afghanistan. Uh He stopped participating in any

781
00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 1: sort of discussions about the actual documentary that he'd gone

782
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,279
Speaker 1: here to make, and stopped doing anything at all to

783
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,320
Speaker 1: help with the humanitarian aid. That isn't ostensibly traveled to

784
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:58,080
Speaker 1: Afghanistan to deliver attempting to sell weapons. That's I mean,

785
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:05,359
Speaker 1: literally the opposite of of delivering at like humanitarian aid. Now,

786
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: The fact that Adema had changed plans completely and was

787
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:11,320
Speaker 1: now getting involved with the actual fighting, of course, endangered

788
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:14,440
Speaker 1: all of the NGO workers he was traveling with. Artists

789
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:17,400
Speaker 1: would later tell a reporter, He's the dumbest fuck I

790
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:29,239
Speaker 1: ever met. Artists also quote. Artists also recalled that. Immediately

791
00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:32,839
Speaker 1: after arriving in country, in order to film a documentary

792
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: about providing humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan, John

793
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 1: Adema announced his desire to quote kill every fucking Afghan.

794
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: I see now, I'm not an expert at a at

795
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 1: a at at providing humanitarian aid. Daniel, you know that's

796
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 1: not really my bag. But I think that's poor form

797
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 1: that Yeah, yeah, that's not how really it goes down.

798
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: That's not really involved in the killing. The part is

799
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 1: not part of the No. For for example, when I

800
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 1: volunteer at soup kitchens to provide food for the homeless,

801
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 1: I don't talk about the secret item where I island,

802
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 1: where I and other millionaires hunt homeless people for sport.

803
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: You know we do it, but you don't talk about

804
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 1: it when you're trying to provide humanitarian aid. It's rude.

805
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, now yes, yes, uh yeah now next,

806
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 1: according from New York Magazine quote, a demon was more

807
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:39,799
Speaker 1: than simply obsessed with the Afghan War. He was, as

808
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:42,840
Speaker 1: other journalists on seen have recounted, absurdly came to capture

809
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 1: dramatic war footage, even if it meant fudging the record

810
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 1: of events. November eleven, A Demon and his three companions, Skirka,

811
00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:53,000
Speaker 1: Long and the cameraman. We're scouting for war footage on

812
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:55,719
Speaker 1: a hill near the Taliban front lines. A Demon left

813
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 1: the group again, hoping to find Northern Alliance troops to

814
00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 1: hang out with. In the meantime was Entourage, which had

815
00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 1: met up with reporter Tim Friend, who was then with

816
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 1: USA Today, and a freelance TV journalist named Kevin Sites

817
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 1: started drawing fire from the Taliban. Skirka got hit with

818
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:12,440
Speaker 1: shrapnel in his right leg. As the group helped Skirka

819
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,200
Speaker 1: down the hill and set about dressing his wound wound,

820
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 1: Skirka's cameraman was capturing the scene on film, and this

821
00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:22,280
Speaker 1: was when Adema returned, trailing clouds of camera ready military glory.

822
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,760
Speaker 1: Just when we finished dressing Skirka's leg, Keith runs up, screaming,

823
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 1: Friend recalls, he reaps, rips off the bandages and redresses

824
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:31,960
Speaker 1: the wounds. Basically, he was acting in front of the camera,

825
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:36,640
Speaker 1: so fucking his friend gets shot in Afghanistan and like,

826
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:39,839
Speaker 1: while they're dressing the wounds, he runs up from trying

827
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:43,160
Speaker 1: to befriend the Northern Alliance and sells them guns, tears

828
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: off the combat dressings and reapplies them so he can

829
00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: be caught on camera helping his friend. Uh, it's awesome.

830
00:46:52,719 --> 00:46:56,040
Speaker 1: That's just that's just the best skirt head to head home. Note,

831
00:46:56,040 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: I just want to throw this out there. The smartest

832
00:46:57,600 --> 00:46:59,439
Speaker 1: person in this whole group that I've heard so far

833
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:03,759
Speaker 1: is Skurkas cameraman. Oh yeah, we do not have this

834
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 1: person's name. No, no, this person has very cleverly omitted

835
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:12,960
Speaker 1: themselves from the recounting of all of this, only in

836
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 1: the way that they have all of the footage and

837
00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: none of the notoriety. It's perfect to the camera. There

838
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 1: has to have been a moment where he was like

839
00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:26,719
Speaker 1: in that all maybe when his he watched his boss

840
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: like have a wound ripped open by uh John Adma,

841
00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 1: so that he could you know what, I think, I'm

842
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:36,839
Speaker 1: pulling my name from this. I don't need I don't

843
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: I don't need this one on the role. Yeah, Uh.

844
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: Skarka had to head home to recover Uh, and, horrified

845
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 1: at the fact that he'd been traveling with a con

846
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,319
Speaker 1: man artist, contacted him and National Geographic to withdraw his

847
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 1: consent to have any of their footage used if John

848
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 1: Adma were in any of it. So Skurka had to

849
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:58,400
Speaker 1: cut together a documentary that cut his friend John Adma

850
00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:01,880
Speaker 1: out of it entirely, which, of course piste off John Adema.

851
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:04,800
Speaker 1: He'd gone to Afghanistan to build a name for himself

852
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 1: as a globe trotting heroic terrorism expert, and the fact

853
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: that he had been cut out of the feature entirely

854
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:13,120
Speaker 1: severely hampered his exploits. To make matters worse, now that

855
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: National Geographic was out of the picture, John Adema had

856
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:19,160
Speaker 1: no one to record him, so he did what all

857
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:22,719
Speaker 1: good kan men do. He pivoted and I'm gonna read

858
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,879
Speaker 1: again from New York Magazine. He began calling himself Jack

859
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:28,120
Speaker 1: and telling journalists that he was working as an advisor

860
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 1: to Northern Alliance troops. He also described himself as a

861
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:33,439
Speaker 1: Green Beret and claimed he was helping special forces round

862
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:36,640
Speaker 1: up Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects. Back in New York.

863
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,360
Speaker 1: Ted Kavanaugh, the TV producer who would originally put Skirka

864
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: onto a demon's Lithuania story, set him up with an

865
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 1: appearance on The Berry Farber Show, a syndicated conservative talk

866
00:48:45,239 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: radio program. Before long, Adema was turning up regularly via

867
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: satellite telephone on American television. He would occasionally call himself

868
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 1: a Green Beret, clearly implying he was on active duty,

869
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: and sometimes he would claim falsely to be working for

870
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:01,279
Speaker 1: Partners International, which, like Knightsbridge, severed all ties with a DEEMA.

871
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:03,880
Speaker 1: These are the two groups he went there to film mainly,

872
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:07,040
Speaker 1: though he mischaracterized himself in telling le vague terms even

873
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 1: as he boasted about his high octane military credentials. You

874
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:12,799
Speaker 1: must be held in high regard, he told Fox News

875
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:15,839
Speaker 1: host Linda Vester via satellite phone on November two thousand one,

876
00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:18,239
Speaker 1: because I think you're the only person ever to get

877
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: an interview with a Special Forces qualified guy inside this country.

878
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: So you see what happens there is he loses his

879
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:29,120
Speaker 1: access to the legitimate journalists he traveled there with because

880
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:32,280
Speaker 1: he fox everything up for them, and he just starts

881
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:35,880
Speaker 1: reaching out to reporters and basically saying, hey, you know

882
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 1: how everyone who's actually doing anything is too busy to

883
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:41,480
Speaker 1: talk to journalists on the phone from the middle of Afghanistan.

884
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 1: I got all the time in the fucking world, baby,

885
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: and I will pretend that I'm still in Special Forces

886
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: if you will put me on TV. And that's what

887
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:56,120
Speaker 1: he fucking does. Uh Yeah. Now, people who actually knew

888
00:49:56,200 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 1: Jackadema and knew that he was full of ship attempted

889
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:01,240
Speaker 1: to warn the government that there was actually a scammer

890
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,319
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan passing himself off as a military expert and

891
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 1: doing god knows what to further his unclear but definitely

892
00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:10,920
Speaker 1: shifty goals. Uh nights. Briggs reached out to American authorities

893
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:14,160
Speaker 1: about Adema, writing Army Special Operations Command that the rogue

894
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:16,759
Speaker 1: operator was both a threat to aid workers and to

895
00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 1: the overall mission of the United States and the coalition

896
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:23,400
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Partners International, who's another aid group that Adema

897
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: had sucked around with, did the same thing, but Afghanistan

898
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: was a chaotic place in late two thousand one. The

899
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:31,840
Speaker 1: warnings went unheeded as there were too many journalists in

900
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:33,800
Speaker 1: country during the height of the war for the warnings

901
00:50:33,840 --> 00:50:37,680
Speaker 1: to spread very far. Jack also repeatedly sued ed Artist

902
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:40,760
Speaker 1: and Knightsbridgs International, locking the aid worker and his charity

903
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:43,319
Speaker 1: and a series of interminable lawsuits and distracting them from

904
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: actually saving lives. But Adema never got distracted. He was

905
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan to grift reporters and whoever else he could find,

906
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:53,320
Speaker 1: and that is exactly what he did. There are numerous

907
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:55,799
Speaker 1: stories of Adema during this period. The reporters who were

908
00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:58,319
Speaker 1: savvy enough to catch onto his bullshit early started calling

909
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:03,759
Speaker 1: him by the very appropriate nickname Jack Shit Na. That's good,

910
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:08,600
Speaker 1: that's good, good now. Kim Singh put Up, Paul Lashmar

911
00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:11,719
Speaker 1: and Nick Meo are journalists who were reporting in Afghanistan

912
00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: for The Independent during this period of time, and I

913
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 1: want to close this first episode with one of their

914
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:21,440
Speaker 1: recollections about a particularly fine Jack Adema caper quote. Some

915
00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 1: of us first met Jack in two thousand one, when

916
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 1: the Taliban had retreated from Kabul. Victorious Northern Alliance fighters

917
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:29,360
Speaker 1: were parading in the streets and US and British forces

918
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:32,080
Speaker 1: were pouring into Bagram Air Base. A dapper man in

919
00:51:32,120 --> 00:51:34,640
Speaker 1: a black t shirt and combat trousers, a glock pistol

920
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 1: strapped in his shoulder Holster A Dee mcgrad gave a

921
00:51:37,239 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 1: graphic account of his supposed experiences as a former US

922
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: Army green Beret who trained with the s a S

923
00:51:42,880 --> 00:51:45,719
Speaker 1: as an adviser to the Tajik and Uzbek Uzbek Militia's

924
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 1: how he helped plan the mission operation to take out

925
00:51:48,160 --> 00:51:51,560
Speaker 1: the Afghan capital. The meeting took place at the Mustafa Hotel,

926
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 1: then being built in the city's center. It was another

927
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:57,320
Speaker 1: example of the seemingly endless carpet bagging opportunities then on offer.

928
00:51:57,719 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 1: The owners were and continue to be a family of

929
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:02,600
Speaker 1: Ganics patriots from New Jersey. The hotel named after one

930
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 1: of three brothers sipping whiskey, then retailing it a hundred

931
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:08,480
Speaker 1: and forty dollars a bottle at the supermarket off Chicken Street.

932
00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:11,320
Speaker 1: A demo offered to organize a convoy to Tora Bora,

933
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: where the Taliban and al Qaeda were making It was

934
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:15,440
Speaker 1: thought to be their last stand and where the Americans

935
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: were confident Osama bin Laden was trapped. After making a

936
00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 1: few checks with the British military, someone was decided to

937
00:52:21,120 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 1: decline his offer. Those who went were robbed at gunpoint.

938
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: A quarter of the way through the journey by their

939
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:28,520
Speaker 1: guards and made their way, but draggled back to Kabul.

940
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:31,000
Speaker 1: Jack professed to be outraged. He would take this matter

941
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: up immediately with his good friends in the Afghan government

942
00:52:34,040 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: and the bandits would be executed. None of this ever happened.

943
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: He was just selling reporters to bandits. Uh. And I'm

944
00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:43,320
Speaker 1: sure getting a kind of what they stole from them. Yeah.

945
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:48,640
Speaker 1: So he's a fun guy. I love it. He's a

946
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 1: good guy and the people. The fun thing about John

947
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:56,560
Speaker 1: ah Dimon is that the grifts were really just starting

948
00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:00,719
Speaker 1: at this point. Um like he was. He is just

949
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 1: kind of dipping his feet into the great Afghan con game. Uh.

950
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:07,719
Speaker 1: And in part two we're going to talk about what

951
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 1: happened after he got his feet all the way in

952
00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:13,359
Speaker 1: the water. That's not a great way to phrase this,

953
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:18,799
Speaker 1: but that's what I said. So perfect the episodes over, Dan, Well, well,

954
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:21,359
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a wonderful start. As I feel

955
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 1: about the political system these days, when is an adult

956
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:27,799
Speaker 1: going to step in and pull the strings out and

957
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:31,440
Speaker 1: just pull this person away, take the cane from the

958
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 1: side of the stage and just yank them out of here.

959
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:37,279
Speaker 1: So excited for that moment to eventually happen because this

960
00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 1: man is just going off as it were. Yeah, you

961
00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:44,680
Speaker 1: can find Daniel on the internet. Where's your twitch, Daniel?

962
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:48,000
Speaker 1: What do you do? You're doing video games? Yeah, yeah,

963
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:50,359
Speaker 1: I do the video games. I mean also, you know

964
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,359
Speaker 1: what I mainly do is I edit podcast for you

965
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:57,280
Speaker 1: and for the next continue listen to Behind the Bastards

966
00:53:57,320 --> 00:54:00,920
Speaker 1: and the Women's War, and you listen to Worst Hear

967
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:03,799
Speaker 1: Ever and you listen to it could happen here if

968
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:05,759
Speaker 1: you haven't already, listen to all the shows in the

969
00:54:05,760 --> 00:54:07,400
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Network because it's a lot of my

970
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:09,759
Speaker 1: work and I appreciate you all so much. You can

971
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at DJ Underscore Daniel. You can

972
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:15,280
Speaker 1: follow me on twitch at also twitch dot tv slash

973
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: DJ Underscore Daniel. Come find me a play video and

974
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:20,320
Speaker 1: the Daniel is d A n L d J Underscore

975
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:23,000
Speaker 1: d A n L. And yeah, we play lots of games.

976
00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 1: We do stuff like jack Box and play on Rocket League.

977
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:27,279
Speaker 1: I'm really into Half Life Alex right now, the new

978
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,480
Speaker 1: VR game. It's mind blowing. Anyway, come check me out

979
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:34,799
Speaker 1: there and thank you, thank you. Yes, check danil out

980
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:38,239
Speaker 1: and check yourself out, but no one else because going

981
00:54:38,239 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 1: outside is dangerous. Amen. Yes, lock yourself in your rooms,

982
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:48,359
Speaker 1: listen to more podcasts by the products advertised by those podcasts. Yes,

983
00:54:48,560 --> 00:54:53,560
Speaker 1: and together we can build a new humanity, humanity based

984
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:58,399
Speaker 1: entirely around staying inside and listening to podcasts. You get

985
00:54:58,880 --> 00:55:01,719
Speaker 1: this podcast at that as cod on Twitter and Instagram,

986
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 1: you can follow Robert at irite. Okay, you can listen

987
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:07,840
Speaker 1: to him on all those shows candles listed, especially The

988
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:13,399
Speaker 1: Women's War, which is officially out, and you can buy

989
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:17,160
Speaker 1: merch on our t public store. Somebody on Twitter specifically

990
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:19,520
Speaker 1: told me that I should shout out the General Anderson shirt.

991
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:26,759
Speaker 1: It's awesome, It's so good you baby m